Another Day in the Life

Last time around for Bobbi Newman’s Day in the Life project, I kept track hour by hour of a single day. That so didn’t work out this week, so instead I’m going to list the projects I’m currently in the middle of. I’m a Youth Services Librarian, but overall I spend more time on developing programs & services than I do on the floor.

Baby Storytime

I give 2 baby storytimes on Monday mornings. Each session runs about 20 minutes, with 20-30 minutes afterwards of play time together. We just purchased some new Burgeon Group pieces for this branch and they are a big hit with our families already!

This post-storytime playtime is a wonderful opportunity for the parents to connect, for the babies to play, and for me to be available to the caregivers if they have questions about books, child development, library services…anything. Plus I get to play, too! I have been plugging our new “Book a Librarian” service to them and am hoping they can help spread the word through their networks! After storytime, I blog my storytime plan and Tweet my early literacy tip of the day.

LSTA Grant Project for CLEL

I serve on the steering committee for Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy, a group of librarians and staffers from all over the state working to promote early literacy programs and services in public libraries. We received an LSTA grant that will help us expand our website to include a collection of videos, and I am on the committee that has been working to write a Request for Proposal and hire a web development team that can do this piece for us. On Monday I met with a couple other CLEL members and representatives from Rocky Mountain PBS, who are our partners in this grant!

Book a Librarian

Our library district recently launched a Book a Librarian service, which allows patrons to schedule a 30 minute appointment with a librarian, for help with a particular in-depth information need. We are just getting started with this, but response has been strong and the feedback has been positive. We have been getting a lot of requests for help with business reference, genealogy research, and tech support, but I think it’s a natural fit for parents and educators as well & hope we receive more and more interest from those groups.

Tuesday I had an appointment with a mom who had been homeschooling for less than a year. She knew she wasn’t “maximizing” her use of the library and wanted some help with search skills. It was very fun to sit down with her and show her how to run advanced searches in the catalog, how to use our Prospector partnership, and how to access the kids’ databases.

Last week I met with a grandma and grandpa who wanted some tips on how they could support language development in their 2 year old grandson, and they were thrilled with the early literacy information and book ideas I was able to share with them. I am excited by this new service and am looking forward to more awesome appointments!

Nursery Rhyme Time

This week I took my Nursery Rhyme Time program to a preschool Parent Evening for the first time! The preschool needs to have several parent education opportunities a year. On Wednesday after school, I brought everything over to the elementary school and we ran the program from 4.30pm – 6pm. The activities are designed for grownups and children to play together, and to promote early literacy skills and kindergarten readiness, and to model to parents on how they can build language skills in their kids while they are playing together. Here’s a little guy trying to knock down a Humpty Dumpty from his wall with a beanbag. Prompts for the parents include to ask the child what size (big, medium, or small) was the Humpty Dumpty they want to knock down, what color beanbag they are using, how would it feel to fall off a wall, what can you use to put Humpty together again?

We had a really nice turnout and I had some very positive feedback from the teachers and the parents, and the kids! This is my first try taking this program out of the library, so this was an encouraging success!

Literacy Based Storytime Training

The rest of the week will be spent prepping for a staff training class I have coming up. In conjunction with our Literacy Librarian, I teach new storytime providers how to plan and present literacy-based storytimes. My session with these new staffers introduces them to our district’s storytime standards, tips for how to plan and construct storytimes, tips for matching books and activities to appropriate ages of kids, and how to present early literacy tips and information to caregivers during storytime in a seamless way. *whew*

And…

So that’s my week! I love my job because I have a chance to work on a wide variety of projects and I am able to focus on early childhood programs and services. In and around my bigger projects, I am on Twitter, reading PUBYAC, taking reference calls from our call center, answering emails…and this week I’ve been trying to figure out what ten best chapter books to send to Fuse #8 for her poll.