Thanks for Participating in the Celebrate Your Freedom to Read With our Contest!!
Thanks to everyone who contributed reviews of banned books as part of TeenRC's Celebrate Your Freedom to Read Contest. Check out the contests page to see the winners.
Thanks for Participating in the Celebrate Your Freedom to Read With our Contest!!
Thanks to everyone who contributed reviews of banned books as part of TeenRC's Celebrate Your Freedom to Read Contest. Check out the contests page to see the winners.
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I registered but the e-mail isn't coming through. What do I do?
First of all, most of the people who have problems receiving the notification e-mail seem to be using a Microsoft product (hotmail.com or live.com). Please consider using a non-Microsoft e-mail address for your TeenRC registration and notifications.
Secondly, have you looked in your spam folder? Just checking. Some people don't look there so please check if you haven't.
If the message isn't there (and it should only take a few minutes to get to you), please try registering again because chances are you used the wrong e-mail address to register or maybe you misspelled it. If the website lets you register a second time, without saying that your e-mail address is already in use, that's what happened.
If you're still having trouble, please let us know!
I had an account last year but I can't log on!
Chances are you created your account in or after March sometime. Unfortunately, we weren't able to import all of the accounts so some of you will have to start over. Sorry for the inconvenience!
The other possibility is that you changed your username or password since March -- that also wasn't translated to the new site. If you're having problems and you want them solved, please e-mail us. We'll get you sorted out quickly!
I changed my username and now I'm having trouble logging in.
Sorry -- no username changes. If you've managed to change your username, please change it back to what it was when you signed up. If you absolutely need your username changed, we can do it for you. Please e-mail us if you need that.
How do I change my username?
You can't. If you change it, the site won't work properly for you. If you're desperate to change your address, please e-mail us.
I forgot my password!
Please type your username and a fake password into the login boxes. When you enter the wrong thing, you'll have the option to have your password e-mailed to you. This only works for the main part of the site, not for the forum-specific login.
Why do you need my email address and phone number?
We use your e-mail address in case you forget your password, if we need to respond to your questions, or if we need to write to you about something. We may also use your e-mail address to contact you if you win a prize. Please update your e-mail address in your profile if you change it! Don't worry: we won't share your sell your e-mail address (or other personal information) AT ALL. We won't even let your librarian use it to track you down over library fines.
We collect phone numbers so that libraries know who to call when they receive prizes for you. It also helps us in the event of an emergency. Nobody from outside the program will have access to your phone number and if you ask us to delete your account, that information will be deleted permanently.
Find out more about our privacy policy.
Why do you need to know my home library?
First, so that you can be eligible for prizes (if your jurisdiction has prize draws). If you don't enter a home library and branch, you can't be entered into the prize draws.
Second, so that we know where to send our prize when you win one. If you pick the wrong library, we might send a prize to a library on the other side of the province/country and you'll never receive it.
Third, for statistical purposes: so that we know how many teens from your community are registered for the site.
Don't worry -- your librarian isn't allowed to use this site to track you down if you owe library fines! :-)
To change your home library, please click on the "My account" link at the top of the page > click "Edit" > click on "Personal Information" > change what you need to change!
What if my library's not listed as a participating library? And what if I'm not from Canada?
If you're from a library in Canada, talk with a local librarian about getting your library onto the site. If you have any questions about how to do that please drop us an e-mail.
If you're from a library outside of Canada then you're still VERY welcome to register for the site, participate in forum discussions, and submit book reviews, but we can't enter you into the prize draws or notify you of local library events. Please let us know if you have any questions!
How do I submit a book review?
How do I add a new book to the book lists?
Well, you have to search for it first. Please look carefully because it's a lot of work (for you, especially) to move your review around if you submit a book that already exists on our site. To search, go to the book lists and enter your search words.
Search Tips: If you can't find the title, try the author. If you can't find either one, try some keywords. For example, if you can't find the book "How TeenRC Made me the Success I am Today", try searching the word "success" or "success today". If you know the book is part of a series, try searching for the series.
Adding a Book: You'll have the option of submitting a new one when you don't get any returned search results. Trust us. You'll see that link. If you don't, post something in the forums!
Please type the title and author carefully, and then add a book description. The book description tells us what the story's about (you can borrow it from the back of the book if you like).
Once you've submitted the book description, you can submit it to the moderators. As soon as you submit it, you'll see a link to "Add a review". Click on that link to tell the world what you thought about what you read!
I have been posting a lot of reviews on the website, but I don't seem to see them published. What's going on?
In general, your books and reviews should be published within 3 days. You can always check the status of your books or reviews by looking at the comments that moderators have left for you in your workspace.
If a moderator has left a request that you check over your work and resubmit it, please make those changes and then submit your book or review again. As always, if you have questions or problems, please e-mail us using the contact form.
Why do I see gobbledygook when I submit a book or review?
Chances are you're copying your text from a Word document. That messes everything up. Please don't do that. If you need to copy from some text you've written, please copy from a plain-text editor like Notepad. Thank-you!
Why don't I see my book reviews right away?
Before your review is posted to the website it's read by a librarian to ensure that it's long enough (3-4 sentences minimum), that it doesn't contain any spoilers, that it's got some opinions, that it's your own review, and that it doesn't contain any personal information. Sometimes this can take a few days so thanks for your patience! If you think there's a problem with your reviews or you keep seeing them not get posted, please contact us because there might be a problem with the site. For more info please see this question.
What is the difference between a "description" and a "review"?
A description gives the reader an unbiased idea of what the book is about; a review gives the reader your biased opinion about what you liked and/or didn't like about it.
For example, "Out to Lunch is about a teacher who won't stop eating" would belong in the description and "Out to Lunch was a terrible book" would belong in the review.
Can you give me some ideas for writing a Great Book Review?
We sure can! The most important part of being a reviewer is to share your opinion: what did you like about the book -- the chatty characters? the style of writing? the font? the plot? the cover art? And what didn't you like? the length? the lame descriptions? the chatty characters?
What are the characters like? What do they want? What is the mood like? Is there lots of dialogue? Is the book funny, creepy, boring, thrilling, moving, informative, realistic, soothing, or nutso?
Do you recommend this book to other people? Why or why not?
Please don't curb your enthusiasm -- go ahead and rant or rave -- but please don't give away the plot twists or the ending!
What's the workspace thing about and how do I get there?
You can find the workspace in the list of links under your username when you're logged into the website. You can use the Workspace to keep track of all the books and reviews that you've submitted to TeenRC. You can also check a book or review's status and see if a moderator has approved it yet.
You can also save books or reviews as drafts and submit them later. Have fun experimenting and exploring!
It says that my workspace is full and I can't add any more reviews. What do I do?
When you go into your workspace, you should be able to see a tab called "configure". Click on that tab and change the number from 50 to...something bigger! We wish we could change that setting for everyone but we can't apparently. :(
Why can’t I log in to the forums? Something’s messed up!
Not broken -- just not communicating properly. The cookies are messed up in your browser and you need to clear them and then restart your browser. Here’s how to do that:
Firefox users: go up to tools > make sure the "cookies" box is checked > clear private data. Restart your browser. Good luck!
Safari users: go up to edit > preferences > show cookies > remove all. Restart your browser. Good luck!
Internet Explorer: go up to tools > internet options > general > browsing history > delete. Restart your browser.
Good luck!
What are the forums and how do I use them?
You can get to the forums by clicking on the forums link at the top of the page. Spend a few minutes clicking around to see who's saying what and then, when you see a conversation you want to participate in, go ahead and hit the "Post reply" button or start a new topic!
If you think you're not logged in and see a "login" link at the top of the forums in the blue bar across the top, you can either log in or fix your browser problem by reading this bit here.
A good place to start posting to the forums if you're not quite sure what to do is to say hello in the introductions forum. The best way to learn about the forums is to play around with them! Please drop us a line if you have any specific questions or problems. :D
How do I get an avatar for the discussion forums?
What's a signature and how do I get one?
Signatures are the little bit of text that people have when they're posting in the forums. When people have a signature (and not everyone does) it shows up under every post they make to the forums. If you're still not sure what we mean, visit the forums and look at some of people's posts. If you're still confused, please follow these instructions to get a sig and then do a test post to see what it looks like.
To get yourself a signature:
We've turned off private messaging because it's a safety concern -- we don't want unauthorized adults or advertisers signing up with accounts and then contacting you.
Moderators have the ability to approve books and reviews and each book genre has from one to a few moderators looking after it. You can find out who a genre's moderators are by reading the forums and seeing which moderators are most active in the forums you care about.
Librarians are able to be active on the site, too, but they don't approve books and reviews. They might post to the forums, though!
Moderators are either librarians, library school students, or summer students. You can tell which is which in the forums because the mods' usernames show up as purple while the librarians' usernames show up as dark, bold blue.
We usually have a maximum of 10 teen mods on the website at any time. They help out in the forums making sure that things are safe and fun.
Teen mods are generally selected based on their active participation in the forums and our observations of their maturity, good judgement, and interest in supporting the TeenRC community. We've had age requirements in the past but we've traded them in for those other qualities we think are more important. :-)
If you have a beef with one of the teen mods, please write to us. We'll keep your comments private but deal with the problem.
If you right-click on the link on the page that you want to send, you should have the option to "copy link" or "copy link location". You can then paste it in one of your own posts or in an e-mail by right-clicking where you want it to go and selecting "paste" from the menu that appears.
Now the optional part: if you paste that link, it should look something like this: teenrc.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=22. That will strip away the main TeenRC part of the site. If you want to keep the site formatting, replace the word "forums" with "phpbbforum" so that, for example, that link would read: teenrc.ca/phpbbforum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=22.
How do I win a prize?
To win prizes, you have to submit book reviews. Only book reviews count toward prizes. When we run a prize draw, we gather up all the reviews from some length of time and the computers pick a few people at random. From those random choices, we check the reviews to make sure they're of decent quality, and then we send out prizes!
For British Columbia prize draws (iPods!!), you have to submit 5 book reviews over the course of the summer. The grand prizes winners will be selected randomly from all the people who submit 5 or more book reviews -- so get posting!
The only province that does provincial prize draws is British Columbia. For more information about what prizes are available from your local library or region, please talk to your librarian.
Will I get more prizes if I submit more reviews?
Your chances of winning increase, yes, but the quality of the reviews is still important. We'd rather see one great review than three lazy ones.
What if I can't read or write very well?
No problem! Do your best and the reviews you submit will still be eligible for prizes! As long as you're reading, your entered into the prize draws!
If you live in BC and win a provincial draw, it can take awhile before you're contacted because it's quite a process to send a prize to a winner! First, we do the prize draw, then we send an e-mail to someone in a different office who puts the package together (and she's sometimes really busy) and then if she misses the mail that day it goes out the next day and then it has to travel wherever and if it's one of the libraries near Vancouver, it has to wait for internal mail which only gets picked up from the office on Wednesdays and then gets distributed from there. Then we don't know how many people it has to go through at your library's end before someone phones you SO -- please be patient. If it's been 2 weeks or something crazy like that, please let us know by sending us an e-mail and we'll investigate!
If you're not from BC, please ask your librarian if she or he has any news!
What's with the name change? TeenRC or TeenSRC?
We used to be a summer-only reading club but now that we're stretching ourselves across all the seasons, we thought we should have an accurate name: we're now the Teen Reading Club.
Do I need a library card to participate in TeenRC?
Nope. We highly recommend them, though: libraries are an excellent source of mental nutrition.
Who runs TeenRC?
TeenRC is coordinated by a team of volunteer librarians and teens from across Canada, with the generous support of the BC Library Association, Public Library Service Branch (BC Ministry of Education, Margaret MacDiarmid Minister), Greater Victoria Public Library, Public Library InterLINK, and our sponsors. If you have any questions about how the site works, please contact us!
How can I maximize my TeenRC experience?
Start by avoiding Microsoft products. Our website works best viewed on any browser aside from Explorer. Hotmail and Live e-mail accounts often cause problems during registration. Copying reviews from Word into TeenRC makes them look all wonky. We recommend using the open-source Firefox web browser and switching to OpenOffice for your word processing needs. Thank-you.
Next, participate! :D
I've sent you an e-mail and you didn't write back. Why didn't you write?
We reply to every e-mail we receive. If you haven't received a reply within a day or two, please write back to us -- your message may have been blocked by our spam filters or, more likely, we don't have the right e-mail address for you.
If you haven't heard back from us, please let us know and to guarantee that we receive your message the second time please send it from your e-mail account to info@teenrc.ca instead of using the contact form. Thank-you!
What if my library doesn't have a book that I really want to read?
Libraries from all over your province, across the country, and around the world share books with each other. So, if your library is missing something in particular, you can ask your librarian to bring that book in just for you. That system is called "interlibrary loan". Best of all, interlibrary loans are almost always free (your librarian will tell you if it isn't). Sometimes you might not be allowed to interlibrary loan books that are either really new or in special collections (e.g. rare books, DVDs).If you're not sure if your library has what you're looking for, please ask your librarian. Trust us, there's nothing that pleases a librarian more than showing a young person how to use everything the library has!
My library's not listed as a participating library. How can I get my library to participate in the TeenRC?
Please ask your librarian to e-mail us (info@teenrc.ca) and we'll give them all the information they need to join TeenRC! It's easy for libraries to join the program and we'd love to include as many people as possible on the site!
What if I don't like to read?
We think the problem is that you just haven't found the right books. There are books for every reader. Maybe you're being told what to read instead of getting to pick the books yourself. Please go to your library immediately and tell the person at the desk that you've got the Reader's Emergency: you need a good book! If you don't want to go to the library to ask, please have a look at our forums and challenge your fellow teens to come up with a list of books that are irresistible. Once you have that list, find them at your local library or ask your librarian to help you interlibrary loan them.
What if I'm terrified of the librarian?
Librarians are usually odd people so they might need a little bit of coaching. Start by making the first move: politely ask her/him for a book recommendation or volunteer to straighten out a shelf of books if you have a spare few minutes. Bringing the librarian fresh baking doesn't hurt, either. If you're really having trouble, send the local library board a thank-you letter saying what a great thing you think the library is and watch your brownie points rack up. :-)
How many Canadian libraries are participating in the TeenRC?