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Huntington Woods Library Uses Tunes and Beats to Attract Teens

Posted on: Monday, 10 April 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Bill Laitner, Detroit Free Press

Apr. 10--Even with computers, snack bars and young-adult book displays, today's libraries find it harder than ever to lure teens.

So at Sunday's open house at the Huntington Woods Public Library, director Shelley Gach staged a teen magnet that would've had her stereotypical peer putting forefinger to lips and saying, "Shh!"

It was a rock-and-roll band, comprised of five local teens, whose amped-up sound rumbled from a basement activities room to the first-floor stacks and adult reading room.

Rock and read?

"I think it's a nice mix," said onlooker Jillian Allison, 18, of Oak Park, who said she dropped by to hear Vamp Danko perform when she heard of the band's appearance at Berkley High School. She joined about a dozen other teens in the audience.

Across the country, "libraries are really working to bring in the middle-school age and the teens," Gach said. "We do real well from preschool up to about fifth grade, and then there's a big drop-off," she said.

Huntington Woods Library Board member Leon Pratnicki, 80, whose library tastes lean to newspapers and current-events magazines, sat at a table in the foyer Sunday, greeting visitors. As the band tuned up, he said: "I wasn't expecting this, I'll say that. But you've got to go with the times. Every generation has its idiosyncrasies."

The members of the band were just as surprised to be there, said drummer Josh Potter, 18, of Huntington Woods.

"We've been putting this online and calling our friends. I told them it's in the library basement, and they, like, do a double take," said Potter, a senior at Berkley High School.

"But if nothing else it'll make them realize that the library is more than just books and, ahh, stuffy people," he said.

"Yeah, it's a hangout!" quipped band mate Keith Billie, 19, of Royal Oak, the lead singer.

The band and its crashing chords weren't the only nontraditional sight and sound. The library -- celebrating National Library Week, which ended Saturday -- also hosted a handwriting analyst, an antique appraiser and a magician.

Nationwide, although book circulation in many libraries has waned, the number of patrons climbed in recent years, as libraries added computers and collections of electronic entertainment on compact discs and DVDs, said Gail Gilman, manager of the Detroit Public Library's Chaney branch, on Grand River near Greenfield in Detroit. (This news story was largely written on a computer at the Huntington Woods Public Library.)

For teens in particular, libraries now must compete with microchips that bring into homes everything from computer games to the Internet.

But for a cadre of curious youth, the Sunday performance of what band members called "melodic alternative progressive rock" made going to at least one library a real blast.

Contact BILL LAITNER at 248-351-3297.

photo

The Berkley band Vamp Danko -- with Ryan Wehby, 17, of Berkley on guitar and Josh Potter, 18, of Huntington Woods on drums -- plays a gig Sunday at the Huntington Woods Library in celebration of National Library Week. The rock concert was an effort to bring teens to the library. (Photos by RICHARD LEE/Detroit Free Press)

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Source: Detroit Free Press

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