Mel's Desk

The other day on Twitter I asked:

I'm curious–what's an average "storytime workload"? How many storytimes do you do per week? Alternatively, [1/2]

— Melissa Depper (@MelissaZD) March 5, 2014

[2/2] …How many storytimes in your branch or district are covered by how many trained staff? Thanks!

— Melissa Depper (@MelissaZD) March 5, 2014

I had a wonderful set of answers! A very rough average [ed: oops, wrong math term] mode was 2-3 per staff member, but the range went from 2 all the way up to 15! Per week! Lisa and I got to chatting about how, as a manager, she wanted to know what was a reasonable number of programs to set as expectations for her staff, but that the data as to professional norms just wasn’t available. She said,

@MelissaZD That's going to be my big ? as I talk to people @ PLA. What do you do with what staff-what's a good min and what's a max?

— Lisa Mulvenna (@lmulvenna) March 5, 2014

So we thought we’d toss up a really informal survey to see if we could get her some responses before she went to the conference. This is where you come in! If you present storytimes at your library, please take this survey. It’s just seven questions, quick pull-down or multiple choice responses, with one optional “tell us what you want” comment area at the end. If you responded to my survey on Twitter, please take a minute to put your answers here too. This is a really limited tool so we aren’t asking for service area, geographic region, size of library, etc, because we can’t manipulate the data too much. If you are a library student looking for a research project, please take this idea and run with it!

Thanks all!

Informal Storytime Workload Survey

For the last year or so, I’ve had the privilege of serving on The Children & Technology Committee of the ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children. One of our projects currently is running an online “book club” in ALA Connect, an online community area for ALA committees, but also anyone interested in library work and issues. Our book club is reading and discussing Lisa Guernsey’s important book, “Screen Time: How Electronic Media – From Baby Videos to Educational Software – Affects Your Young Child.”

For those of you new to ALA Connect, you do not need to log into ALA Connect in order to see details of the book club. You will, however, have to create an account and log in if you are interested in participating in discussion. But you do not need to be an ALA member to create an ALA Connect account.

Each week, Andrea Vernola and I are adding a post to the Children & Technology Interest Group in Connect. The post will contain discussion questions and conversation starters for one or two chapters of Lisa’s book. Read or re-read along with us and connect with other library staff who are interested in learning about digital media, children’s development, and ways to help patrons navigate 21st century parenting. Comment on the posts in Connect and ask your own questions of other book club participants!

This week we’re looking at Chapters 2 and 3: Is TV Turning My Tot into a Zombie? and Could My Child Learn from Baby Videos?

Come join us!

I had the great good fortune to be able to combine a visit to my brand-new niece with a day-trip to the first annual Michigan KidLib Unconference! It was even more fun because I wasn’t the only person coming from out of state! Anna from Cinncinnati learned about the unconference because she is a So Tomorrow reader (and if you’re not you should be too) and received permission from her boss to drive up for the day.

Why did we–and everyone else who drove across Michigan on a winter day–make the effort to attend? Because even without planned workshops and presentations, unconferences can be powerful continuing education opportunities. With three breakout sessions and 12 topics to choose from, everyone attending had the chance to listen in on and contribute to exchanges that informed their day-to-day library responsibilities. Session notes are available if you want to take a look!

It was a great day, I had amazing conversations all day long, met fabulous librarians, and saw some old friends face-to-face for the first time. Being with so many dedicated children’s services pros was wonderfully motivating and recharging, and I am so grateful for the experience.

Lisa, Anne, and Andrea did a super job planning and hosting the event. Lisa and Anne have blogged about how they put the event together with Andrea and I encourage you to read their posts and start to consider if this is something you might bring to your state too.

Can’t take on planning an unconference? What about a smaller event?

Google Hangout

Instead of a day-long in-person experience, can you schedule and host a Google Hangout, and for an hour talk about a single targeted question, program, or service? Maybe your library would like to start a new outreach program–can you reach out to staff at libraries that already offer that service, and ask them to join you to talk about their experience? Your state library youth services consultant might be able to help you find possible contacts–both those who are doing the service and those who are interested in trying it out. He or she might also have established communication channels to help promote the Hangout, too.

Regional Meetups

Does your state library help coordinate face to face networking opportunities? There may be a regular event that until now has flown under your radar. Or maybe there’s a general-interest-something in hand but you’d love to chat just with youth services staff for the night. See if you can use your local listservs, state library blogs, or state library association websites to publicize a night to get together after work. This sort of thing can be a success whether 3 people or 30 attend–more folks means more networking possibilities, but fewer means more chances for deeper conversations. Again, if you’re nervous about starting conversations or keeping them going, come prepared with a few specific questions, programs, research articles, or recent book reviews to talk about. Everyone else is eager to share and learn and it will be easier than you think to keep the ball rolling.

Online Conversation

If you aren’t ready to organize an event, read some thoughts about creating a personal network and consider joining in an existing online conversation. The Flannel Friday and Storytime Underground communities on Facebook always have an active conversation thread to join in or read. If you’re not excited about Facebook for personal reasons, consider creating an account to just use professionally. You don’t have to share anything more than very basic profile information, you don’t have to ever post a status update or photo, or even “friend” anyone, but it would allow you to follow some professional accounts and join in on conversations there. Twitter is another social network that you don’t have to “swim in the deep end” to garner benefits from. Create an account, set it to “private” and without ever tweeting once you can follow along regular Twitter chats, such as Readers Advisory (#readadv on the 1st and 3rd Thursday evening of each month) an ALSC-hosted discussion (#alscchat first Thursday evening every month), or general library issues (#libchat Wednesday nights weekly).

Several weeks ago, Lisa at Thrive After Three asked on the Storytime Underground Facebook page about printed brochures or information she might be able to add to some storytime bags at her library. I shared a few ideas off the top of my head, then realized there were probably more out there and, hey, that sounds like a blog post!

Can never resist adding to my early literacy PR pieces pile

If you are not in a position to create your own early literacy print pieces, or, like Lisa, you have grant or program money that could go towards this, here are a few options, some free to download, some available for purchase.

Reading Rockets
This essential organization has created a very accessible set of 1-page “Reading Tips for Parents” for seven different age groups, birth-grade 3. These sheets are OK to download, print, and distribute for non-commercial use as long as you attribute Reading Rockets. Pre-K-3rd grade sheets are also available in Spanish, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Korean, Navajo, Russian, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

Washington Learning
This company sells a video-based training for parents and caregivers on how to help children develop literacy and language skills. Supporting materials and activity ideas are available for download for free, with registration. Most materials are in English and Spanish; the On-the-Go set is also available in Vietnamese, Mandarin, Somali and Russian.

Bell Awards Silver Bell and 2014 Awards Activity Sheets
The selection committee for the new Bell Awards has created free information sheets available for download; each sheet provides early literacy connections and activity ideas for one picture book.

Center for Early Literacy Learning Parent Guides
CELL has a set of 1-page Practice Guides for parents of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers that outline activities that foster language learning. What I love about these guides is they are organized with four headings: What Is the Practice? What Does the Practice Look Like? How Do You Do the Practice? (and so important) How Do You Know the Practice Worked?

Early Literacy Kit
This resource is built around “early literacy tip cards” that are intended for use by storytime providers, but may work for another project.

Every Child Ready to Read
The 2nd edition kit contains 1 pack of 100 bookmarks, and 1 pack of 100 brochures, both of which can be purchased separately as well.

Very Ready Reading Program Kit
This new storytime curriculum kit, sold by Upstart, contains bookmarks and take-home guides.

Leading to Reading Postcards
Seward Library in Nebraska has created a set of 61 postcards for their storytime families, one card for every month from birth-5 years. Each card has a literacy tip and a recommended book. Free to county residents, non-residents of Seward County may purchase sets.

Helping Your Child Become a Reader
Whatever your feelings about No Child Left Behind, this brochure is a good overview of effective tips and activities. You can download a PDF of the 54-page booklet or the 4-fold brochure in English or Spanish at the link above; I emailed the Department of Ed and found out that they are no longer available to purchase.

Teaching Strategies Parent Guides: Reading Right from the Start.
A 62-page booklet in English or Spanish, buy in sets of 10. Developed by the Parent Counts initiative of the Talaris Institute.

Zero to Three
Zero to Three is an amazing organization and has some great early literacy resources, however, their permissions policy allows individuals to print a single copy of each resource for personal use. Institutions (eg, libraries) must request permission to distribute the resources more widely.

Oh! And don’t forget to check with your state library youth services contact. From time to time our state library partners with different organizations to print brochures, and yours might do this, too.

Do you know of any others to add?

Last fall 5 children’s library bloggers generously donated their time and blogs to help promote the new Bell Awards by talking about books they liked for each of the five Bell Award categories. This week I’m finally posting my belated thanks. Each day I will highlight one of the great blogs from the tour, link to what they wrote for the tour, as well as some posts I like from each blog.

Anna at Future Librarian Superhero wrote the last post for the blog tour, for PLAY.

Anna has worked at both large urban and small rural libraries, and I think this has given her the ability to think critically about a broad spectrum of issues–she sees that youth services includes storytime/programming/collection development, of course, but also how we organize our children’s spaces and how children interact with the library outside of those children’s spaces.

I especially appreciate that Anna shares her individual approaches to youth services practice: it’s so helpful for us to hear that there is not just one way to do this work, and to see that finding what works for us will take trial and error…whether we are learning how to sing in storytime or to develop a workable process for program planning.

Thank you, Anna!

Last fall 5 children’s library bloggers generously donated their time and blogs to help promote the new Bell Awards by talking about books they liked for each of the five Bell Award categories. This week I’m finally posting my belated thanks. Each day I will highlight one of the great blogs from the tour, link to what they wrote for the tour, as well as some posts I like from each blog.

Laura at LibLaura5 took on writing a post for the READ category, and boy is that appropriate because her blog is all about celebrating reading–her reading, her students’ reading, and her family’s reading. Don’t miss her super-fun review of Mr Tiger Goes Wild!

Laura was a first-round judge in the Cybil’s picture book category and is sharing out some of the books on the list in a lighthearted way in her “Cybils Superlatives” posts–so far for the widest books, the snowiest, and the “Minnesot-iest” complete with author interviews and book trailers.

I ESPECIALLY loved her posts detailing her year-and-a-half journey on the Caldecott Challenge to read ALL of the Caldecott medalists and honor books. SOMEDAY I will do this too! But in the meantime I can look at the photo collages she put together for each title–four little details she loved in each book. What a tribute!

Thank you, Laura!