JEROME — They call them “digital natives.”

They’re everywhere, iPods swinging, laptops in hand. Able to type faster than write, and able to navigate the twists and turns of the Internet like they’ve always lived there.

Which they have.

With 87 percent of Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 using the Internet for almost everything, librarians are being forced to change their offerings to both keep their older patrons and attract new ones weaned on electronics.

Several are creating a space just for teens. Tina Cherry and her fellow librarians at the Jerome Public Library are working on just that, thanks in part to almost $1 million left to the library by the estate of Evelyn Crowder.

“(Teens) didn’t have a place to really fit in,” said Cherry, youth program coordinator.

So the library’s teens, in the form of an almost 20-member committee, described what they wanted in a library space and left it to the staff to interpret what would work.

The result is the Flight Deck, set off from the rest of the library by different furniture and even a different carpet pattern. The area, still incomplete, is home to tables with Monopoly and Clue games and the library’s pride and joy, a domed listening station hooked into a 300-disc CD changer. The dome, set a few decibels above the normal background noise, allows teens to listen to music without disturbing others.

The library even allows food at times, setting up a Homework Café during the school year that offers sodas, coffee drinks and snacks.

The area seems to have sparked a trend. Fundraising is under way for a similar room at the Twin Falls Public Library.

The room, already used for teens, will include a homework area with modular desks, a similar listening station for audiobooks and a juice bar with healthy snacks. One entrance will be decorated with panels of colored lights.

The library’s foundation estimates the changes will cost about $75,000, said youth services supervisor Annie-Laurie Burton. Like Jerome, the changes were suggested by a teen advisory board.

“We’re beginning to address their needs in the way they would like them addressed,” Burton said.

Pat Hamilton, director of both the Gooding and Shoshone libraries, said their atmospheres couldn’t be more different. The former teacher has always attracted a strong group of teens in Shoshone, but said she just doesn’t have the same community ties in Gooding.

“Since Gooding’s three times the size, you would expect to see more,” she said. “I can’t be the same kind of person in Gooding … that I am in Shoshone.”

A teen advisory group in Gooding fizzled, and Hamilton tries to stay current with help from a youth book review periodical and a blog about what teens are reading. The Shoshone library has had a bit more success, and stocks a selection of computer and board games. A chess club is also beginning to form. And both libraries employ part-time high school students.

Now she tests Internet technologies such as instant messaging so she is familiar with them and can make a case to her library board to adopt them. But it’s a slow process.

“It’s hard for me to keep up with what’s out there.”

Glimpse the future: To learn more about how teenagers use technology, visit http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/162/report_display.asp Youth at work: Jerome’s Youth Advisory Committee has between 17 and 22 active members. It meets once a week during the school year. The Teen Advisory Board at Twin Falls has about 12 members who meet year-round on the last Thursday of each month. For more information or to join either group, visit the libraries.