I love my "Library Prefect" program. This year, I never even announced it formally (my library is Covid surge space) and have a small group of five students: three of them are in person and two are distance learners (one in China!) They help out with any programming that the library does, and in years past, helped with day to day tasks of library. (Two students reached out to me before the school year started; one reached out during the Fall Term; one reached out in December, and I asked my most recent member because she's such an amazing reader and I was missing her since we no longer eat during the same lunch time!) One prefect made tons of paper snowflakes recently for our Snowstorm of Reading and she's finishing up writing students' and alumni names, titles and authors of recent favorite reads on the snowflakes. Here you can see our kindergarteners putting up our Snowstorm of Reading. (We wanted to include our distance learners and alumni in our "Snowstorm of Reading" program.)

I always have library prefects take part in the brainstorming for programs such as the Nutmeg Book Reveal (though they don't know titles until reveal day), Bizarre & Extreme Day Green Screen, Teen Read Week (when that was in existence); Teentober; Book Fest; then prefects promote the programs, and carry them out under my guidance. Though I'm at a K - 9 school (only grades 6 - 9 are prefects), I had a Biblio-Tech program at my previous high school. Biblio-Techs helped with the day to day running of the library, but I also remember organizing a huge Tech Showcase that ended up being school-wide and people attended from around the state. (That was back in 2008 or 2009--a long time ago). We also met on Friday afternoons(!) to learn all sorts of fun tech and had guest speakers. This Friday afternoon program was done with another fabulous teacher at that school at the time.

Depending on the strengths/interests of your members, you can do all sorts of things!  Here's an example of one of the projects my distance prefects did this year. She's only in 6th grade. I basically told her what I wanted and she put this together on her own. (I think she already has her MLS!) How to Upload Work to Google Classroom

My best advice is to have fun with it! It's a way to reach out to individual students (and gives some who need it a place to fit in and feel purposeful in a safe place) and your wider community through programming. Feed into their interests and needs (and your library's goals/mission, of course, too!) In previous years, I always had my students fill out an application (like a job application--good real world skills). I also had two levels of prefects they could apply for: Pros made a commitment to helping out in the library at least 3 times a week; Lites just helped out with the big programs and when they had time.

Have fun!

~Val