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	Rush Hour: Afterschool
	by April Moon, Emmet O’Neal Library
	Every driver has been caught in it; rush hour traffic, the time of day around 5:00 p.m. when only the bravest drivers attempt to navigate the roads around Birmingham. A similar phenomenon occurs in our local libraries at 3:00 p.m. In this version of rush hour, there are no blaring horns or raised fists, but there are traffic controllers called librarians, and many of these have had to get pretty creative in dealing with this concentrated influx of school-age patrons and their special needs. Libraries such as Leeds-Jane Culbreth, Midfield and Gardendale-Martha Moore use teen volunteers to listen to younger children read aloud and help other children with homework. This offers needed community service hours for honor students while providing a useful service to the community. Many of the teen volunteers end up as paid staff later and they have already gained valuable library experience. Tutoring rooms are available at Irondale, Emmet O’Neal (Mountain Brook) and Trussville libraries. These rooms can be reserved for use by private tutors or study groups. Although every library cannot offer a separate room for private tutoring, all try to be as accommodating as possible with the space available. Most libraries plan special afterschool storytimes and programs and are available to aid any student with reference help or special assignment needs. Many libraries use Assignment Alert forms so that teachers can alert the library when an assignment is looming that may require a large number of students to use limited resources. When receiving notice from a teacher librarians will usually pull the special resources and make them temporarily available for use only in the library, so that a greater number of students can have access to them. In addition to the face-to-face service offered by a librarian, libraries like Birmingham Public Library, Emmet O’Neal (Mountain Brook) and Hoover offer an on-line reference service through their websites. A reference librarian monitors this service and questions are answered within twenty-four hours. So, if you want a quiet place to read the newspaper, rush hour at the library should probably be avoided. But if you are a student and need excellent help from a library professional, then find your local library and get in line!