Home > Teens > Volunteer at the Library!

The Teen Advisory Board (TAB) is the library’s official volunteer organization. Joining the TAB gives you the opportunity to:

• Represent and advocate for the teen community at your public library. 

• Assist with our programs and manage various independent projects. 

• Help the library decide what materials to buy, and what events, activities, and services we offer to you. 

• Serve your community and make the library a place for Montville’s teens to learn and have fun!

Open to Montville Residents in Grades 6-12

These individuals are your representatives and advocates at the library: 

Presidents: Joshua Philip and Safi Patel

Vice President: Ryan Dratler

Secretaries: Badri Raghavan and Anli Liu 

Treasurer: Mrudul Nagapurkar

TAB Requirements

Primary (For officers and committee directors, failure to fulfill these duties may be considered unprofessional behavior.)

• For Officers, Committee Directors, and General Members: 

  1. Attend 6 out of 11 TAB meetings within one term.

     1. Sickness, family emergencies, religious observances, and large/infrequent/mandatory events from certain extracurricular activities are excused absences. Conflicts with regular meetings and practice for clubs and other extracurricular activities are not. Will be determined on a case-by-case basis, advanced notice is advised. 

  2. People may not join the TAB without having a valid volunteer form on file and a library card with up-to-date address.

  3. Know how to register for programs.

• For Officers and Committee Directors

  1. Work together and be communicative. This means being involved in meetings and responsive to most email discussions. (Volunteer time is given for participating in email discussions/online collaboration. As a consequence of that, I do keep track of how much each of you have been involved.)

  2. The TAB as a group has the responsibility of designing, planning, and running a program for their peers three times per term. 

     1. For officers, attendance and participation is mandatory at 2 of the 3 programs, for committee directors it is 1 of the 3. (An excused absence is allowed once for officers. Since the TAB is choosing the time and date, standards for what is considered excused will be very high.)

     2. All officers (but not committee directors) must participate in the planning of each of the three programs. Whether they have done their fair share or not is to be determined by the other officers.

Secondary 

• All TAB officers must know basic library knowledge.

• As a group, publish a survey at the end of their term to gain feedback on how well they performed, and how the next administration can improve.

Reward System

• For Officers, Committee Directors, and General Members:

  • If attended 6 meetings, officer will receive a certificate of service and a letter of commendation. General Members who have not met the attendance requirement, but have seven hours or more of volunteer time will likewise receive a certificate of service.

  • If performed admirably throughout term of service, Jeff will write you a letter of recommendation. 

• For Officers and Committee Directors:

  • If attended 8 meetings and individually excelled at the TAB-run programs, a prize will be awarded.

TAB Disciplinary Policy

We expect all volunteers to be responsible, reliable, and professional. We treat volunteers essentially as staff. There is a three strike policy. If you are behaving unprofessionally in any TAB capacity (volunteering at a program, attending a meeting, etc.), violating the library's Code of Conduct, or are not fulfilling the duties of your position, your first strike will be an official warning. If the issues continue, it will result in a second strike. At that point, you will have a meeting with the YA Librarian and Assistant Director. If the issue continues after that, you will be removed from either your position, the volunteer roster, or the organization itself, depending on the nature of the issue. This applies for everyone in TAB: General Members, Committee Directors, and Officers.

Before the Election

• If you are running, you must read the TAB Guidelines/Requirements prior to the election. By running for office you are agreeing to carry out the responsibilities of your intended position, fulfill the officer requirements, and adhere to the disciplinary policy. 

• It would be good for candidates to have an understanding of how TAB and the library work, i.e. what TAB is able to do and has done in the past, how to find out about upcoming programs, the library’s Code of Conduct, the difference between volunteering and participating in programs, how to find and use the TAB Folder and Volunteer Calendar, etc. Feel free to ask me if you need to learn about any of these things. 

• All officers are expected to be leaders and act as representatives and advocates for their community.

• If you don't have a volunteer form or a library card, I will bar you from the election. Likewise, if you do not register to attend the election using the library website, you will not be allowed to run. 

• People can campaign together as running mates, though they will be voted on separately. (So one person in the pair might be elected, but the other not.)

• I want to make clear that this is a big commitment and we need officers who will take that commitment seriously. I understand you all have sports, clubs, and other extracurriculars, but this is as important as any of those. Officers will be expected to make time for their TAB duties regardless of what else they have on their plates. This includes even academics (if your grades are in such poor shape that you won’t have time for TAB due to studying, maybe an officer position is not for you). This is a legitimate organization that has a lot of tasks to perform. Officers are expected to attend a majority of our YA events. Please consider your schedules carefully, if you know that your other obligations and commitments will conflict with completing TAB duties successfully, you should reconsider running for office.

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Procedure during the Elections

• The Presidents for the present term will preside over the election, unless they themselves are candidates.

• We will begin with the candidates for President. They will each give 2 minute speeches (with the order being determined randomly in advance). After the speeches, we'll take a few minutes to let voters ask questions. The candidates will then leave the room, voters may have a brief discussion (where I will only offer facts, not opinions, since the choice belongs to the teens, not me), and then the vote. We'll repeat that process as we go down in rank.

• The TAB decided that people may try running for a second position in the event of them not being elected for their first choice. They may make an optional 30 second secondary speech to clarify how they'd be good at that new position.

• I will provide two sets of public records, one organized by grouping officers together and general members together, and the other is organized by who is running for what. The former is organized by rank and date of joining, respectively. The latter is in the order pulled from the hat. In the interest of fairness, I will only indicate whether an officer was an officer (and thus generally possessing more hours due to more duties) and not what their position was to remove any unfair associations (i.e. a Secretary running for Secretary). 

• In the past, people have worried that hypothetically, candidates can influence the election by bringing a bunch of their non-TAB friends, and make it a popularity contest. I'm confident that none of you would stoop to that level, but just in case, let me explain how that might work. If someone brings a posse, I can't keep them from voting. Any Montville resident from grades 6-12 can vote and I'm not going to put any barriers against that. I will say though, I will be suspicious of a large group of people I don't recognize, and if they all vote for a single candidate, that candidate will be starting off on the wrong foot with me. You might not lose the election, but you will lose a lot of my good will.

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Speech Content

• For your speeches, if you are already in the TAB, the numbers from the public records might be a good place to start. I'll have copies of them at the election, but I won't really talk about them. It's up to you to put them in your speech. Those of you without strong TAB records, that's ok, since you're all pretty new/just joined. Just think of comparable accomplishments. 

• Keep in peaceful, this isn't Washington, so no mudslinging. You may compare yourself to others, but keep it strictly factual. For example, "I have the best attendance of the TAB officers for the last term" or "I have more volunteer hours than any of the other TAB members". Things like that are ok.

• You can talk about whatever you like in your speeches. You can mention your current position, your hours, your Library Board of Trustees meeting attendance, etc. I’m leaving position off the public records since I didn't want to personally give anyone an advantage (officer vs. general member, high-rank officer vs. low-rank officer, etc.), but you can talk about it.

• You don't have to memorize your speeches.

• Feel free to ask me for advice about your speech. Like, if you need help figuring out your accomplishments, how to phrase things to meet the above niceness requirement, or to see if plans you have if elected are doable, etc

Committee Directors--The Scroggins Process

• We are looking to select passionate TAB members for our Committee Director positions and are trusting that they will fulfill their requirements and our expectations for the term. As such, we have established a rigorous procedure to make sure we only take on the best candidates. 

• If someone has an interest in a Committee Director position or has a new Committee idea that they would like to establish, the first step is to email Jeff, the Presidents, and Vice President. 

• Then, we will set up a brief meeting time to interview the possible candidate and evaluate their credentials or idea. We will then discuss and consider the candidate. 

• Afterward, they must sign a contract that they agree to carry out their assignments for their entire term successfully before official admission to the TAB leadership role.

• We will be making sure that the newly appointed Committee Director does continue to carry out their tasks and is participating at monthly TAB meetings.

Coming soon!