What will boys read?

One of the questions that has troubled librarians, teachers, and parents for years is why boys give up reading fiction at an early age and turn to nonfiction (if they read at all) or to video games. Two pieces in the Sunday New York Times Book Review address this question from different viewpoints. One is Robert Lipsyte’s take on “Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope?” in which he discusses his experience speaking at ALA. As he points out, librarians are overwhelmingly female as are young adult editors and an increasing number of authors (although there certainly are many male YA authors who are popular and prolific). Lipsyte’s thesis is that we (those professionally interested in books) are appealing to the lowest common denominators of boys’ interests and not encouraging them to question their feelings and actions. He cites several older YA books including Robert Cormier’s Chocolate Wars as examples of books dealing with complex moral questions and encouraging introspection. Lipsyte also claims that earlier writers wrote more often about both boys and girls, but now girls are almost absent from YA books aimed at boys. Now, it’s easy for librarians to come up with counter-examples, but the basic question deserves pondering. Do we spend too much time encouraging boys to read violent fantasies or science-fiction books where the emphasis is on defeating enemies no matter what the cost? Have we gone too far in pushing books that are quickly popular and ignoring some which ask their readers to questions what’s going on in today’s world? Lipsyte mentions his own book Raiders Night, which talks about the difficult subject of coaches encouraging drug-taking and ignoring injuries among high school athletes. Yet this book has been challenged and dropped from several high schools as unsuitable for its audience. The column raises many questions we ought to think about at selection time. One of the most basic is—how important is fiction as part of a reader’s diet? Is reading only nonfiction such a bad choice for boys? Is reading a novel always better than reading a thoughtful biography of a national leader or outstanding athlete or artist? But even if nonfiction offers a lot to readers, we surely want to encourage some fiction readers. Should we return to some of the older classics? This raises the eternal question of literary value as contrasted to popularity—a question librarians can never completely decide—so perhaps we should turn to the view from the female reader.

That brings us to Caitlen Flanagan’s review “Shakespeare and Austen Updated” in which she asks whether girls are being shortchanged by the YA novels published these days. Flanagan claims that girls are being denied their natural interest in romance and its relation to sexuality because books (as well as other media) focus so much on sexuality including much that is sexually explicit. Only books, she suggests, give girls a chance to imagine and think through the meaning of emotions and ponder the way they want to live their lives. Only novelists, she claims, can make us think so much about the meaning of sex and how it relates to the rest of our lives. Her thesis is perhaps more difficult to uphold than Lipsyte’s, because if we have so many female authors, editors, teachers, and librarians, why aren’t they seeing that girls are well-served? Nonetheless, if we look across the media landscape today, I think it is easy to say that girls are still being portrayed mainly as sexual objects and that feelings and relationships between the sexes are almost never dealt with in a realistic, sensitive way. It’s so much easier to take the path of showing lots of action and not much thinking or feeling. Perhaps we are shortchanging all of our teenagers by not encouraging them to slow down and examine their feelings and beliefs more often. As a start, I urge all children’s librarians to read these two articles and talk about them with colleagues. They both offer ideas worth pondering.

Who's at home on your homepage?

Now that summer is ending and children are headed back to school, it's a good time to look at your webpage and ask yourself whether it is up-to-date and ready for the busy season ahead. Kids and their parents often size up a library by looking at the homepage and noticing how user-friendly it is. If the school library or children's department has a welcoming homepage, this sets the tone for the service people will find when they enter the building. Brian Matthews, writing in Library Journal gives ten suggestions for looking at your page and assessing its impact on viewers. He doesn't talk specifically about children, but the advice he gives is useful to anyone who uses a webpage as a marketing tool for an institutional service. Look at your library's page--is it attractive? clean and easy to read? constantly changing and offering new information and pictures? We can't spend all of our time these days arranging book displays and posters around the library. What is on our digital portal is just as important as what is on the physical entrance to the library. As new students come into your school library, or new patrons into your department, watch them to see whether they can easily find what they are looking for. Try out your page on friends and the children of friends and relatives. We are often surprised at how other people see the sites we find so useful and convenient. Don't take anything for granted. In this fast-moving world your homepage is the front door to your library for many people Make sure it has a welcome sign on it.

Constantly changing

One of the words sweeping the online world these days is “perpetual beta” a state defined in Wikipedia as the keeping of software or a system at the beta development stage for an extended or indefinite period of time. Perpetual beta is sometimes used as a complaint when software changes so quickly that it confuses or intimidates the user, but more often these days it’s identified as a desirable trait for software, individuals and institutions. But how often have children’s librarians considered their departments as being in a state of perpetual beta?

In an invaluable post on August 10, 2011, in The 21st Century Library blog, Steve Matthews discusses how the concept applies to libraries in general. He writes, Considering that the various external social factors that influence the environment of a 21st Century Library are in perpetual evolution, it seems reasonable to think that the appropriate response would be a ‘perpetual beta’ model of the 21st Century Library. Although librarians often write about change and how we must prepare for it, perhaps we haven’t pondered the continuing change we’ll have to cope with. Whenever a change is made—whether in the way we deliver storytimes, the way we arrange books on the shelves or the way we respond to reference questions—we tend to breathe a sigh of relief and feel a sense of completion. At last we have it right! But the truth is, nothing is ever finally right these days. No sooner is one change made than another one appears on the horizon. We’ve integrated the books with the DVDs on our shelves, but suddenly DVDs are obsolete and we need to find a way of integrating streaming videos with our print collection. How can anyone cope? Well, one thing is sure—we can’t do it alone. We have to let our users or potential users (and their parents) help us. Perpetual beta means groups of people working together to make our services as responsive and valuable as possible.

How should children’s librarians respond to the challenge of being in perpetual beta? Dr. Matthews offers helpful advice: "Remember futurist Alvin Toffler’s Forward to Rethinking the Future, 1999, “The illiterate of the 21st Century are not those that cannot read or write, but those that can not learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Librarians should be the VERY LAST profession who might be considered illiterate because they are incapable of unlearning those conventional principals and practices and relearning the unconventional ideas and innovations that are necessary to keep the 21st Century Library relevant, thriving and providing 21st Century Library services". We children's librarians have an advantage in learning, unlearning and making changes because our patrons are young and do not come with fixed ideas about what a library should be like. We can build a valuable 21st century library service by harnessing their flexibility, listening to their voices, and constantly experimenting with new approaches. Listening and responding is our greatest tool—listening to our patrons, to their parents, and to our colleagues—paying attention to how our services are actually being used. If kids don’t come to the library is it because we don’t have the materials they want? Because we don’t give them the services they need? Because we come across as rigid sticklers for rules? Being in beta is an exciting but difficult experience and we won’t always get it right. But it is the only way we will keep our libraries functioning as a vital service in coming years.

Finally some good news for librarians

The major media hasn't picked up the story yet, but the ever-reliable Publisher's Weekly has reported an important legal change that affects many libraries.Some of us remember that when the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was passed in 2008, books were not exempted from the requirement for health and environmental dangers. The law was written to ensure that toys (especially imported toys) did not pose a threat to American children, but the language included children's books. Luckily the requirement for expensive testing was temporarily put on hold, but now at last books have been formally exempted. There will be some exceptions for books that include toys as part of their package, but the overwhelming majority of books bought for libraries and schools are straightforward books that pose no problems. It's great to see government acting with sensible common sense and coming to the aid of publishers, libraries and schools and especially children! Three cheers all around!

What happened to last year's programs?

As summer begins to merge into fall, librarians start gearing up for a new school year. You may breath a sigh of relief that the summer reading program you spent so much time designing has been a huge success, but next summer will you remember what you did? One of the problems with putting so much of our work online is that digital materials often get erased, pictures of programs are scattered and lost, outlines of storytimes are passed around by email and eventually deleted and forgotten. Do we really want all of this history to disappear? Librarians are experts at preserving information, and the digital materials in our libraries are essential parts of our information. Let's make an effort to preserve the best of what we do.

At least twice a year, someone in the library should go through the materials that have accumulated--pictures, program plans, videos--and assess them for preservation. You'll find a wealth of information on how to do that at the Library of Congress's digital preservation site. LC has prepared a short video outlining the steps to take to preserve your digital files:
1. identify the files you have created
2. decide which ones you want to save
3. organize an Archive folder perhaps with sub-folders for different types of material
4. and then backup your files

Probably the best place to backup your archive files is on an external hard drive which can be stored in a location outside of the library. LC suggests making two or possibly three copies of the hard drive and storing them in various locations.

All this is extra work on top of your already busy days, but it will pay off when you find you have a record of the highlights of what your department has been doing. You can retrieve materials that can be used again. You can find pictures from years ago that form the basis of an exhibit of how the library has grown and changed. And individual librarians can find records of the professional work they have done. These are all valuable results. We don't want our work to disappear leaving no trace. Try setting up a system now so that future librarians can appreciate the past they are building on. It's well worth the effort!

Fewer books for more children

The closing of Borders bookstores across the country will affect not only adults, who are the major purchasers of books, but also many children who have been introduced to the world of books in the big box bookstores. Many communities, even large cities, will now have very few bookstores accessible to most people. It’s time for libraries to step up their publicity about the books and other materials available in children’s departments. Although public libraries try to present themselves as a family-friendly destination for weekends, very few of them are able to attract the large numbers that mall-based bookstores have done.

In the mall that housed my now-dying Borders store, I used to see many family groups browsing through the children’s books, sipping drinks in the café, and crowding the aisles of the graphic novel section. Will libraries be able to attract these people to the library? What is it that makes big box bookstores so popular?
• Proximity to other shopping facilities
• Presence of an in-store café
• Large, colorful stock of books arranged for comfortable browsing
• Chairs and tables to sit and browse
• Noise and movement and a feeling of freedom of action

The biggest advantage that a library has over a bookstore, of course, is that it offers free materials and services, but many residents don’t even know about these. Can a library seize the opportunity presented by the disappearance of Borders? One way would be to advertise the library in space close to where the bookstore was located. Nearby stores might be willing to post flyers about the library in their windows. The mall website might post a notice as a public service.

A few libraries might be able to establish a presence in the mall where Borders used to be. A kiosk or small storefront operation might be set up. If the mall has a meeting area, library storytime programs could be presented on weekends. Library staff or Friends-of-the-Library volunteers might be recruited to pass out flyers about library collections and services.

The important thing to remember is that children and families are being deprived of one of their important sources of books and information. Public libraries should do their best to step in and fill a need so that the next generation of children will learn to know and love the books and other resources we are pledged to provide to them.

My book is out at last!

It's a great day when the mail includes a package as exciting as the author copies of my new book From Boardbook to Facebook: Children's Services in an Interactive Age, published by Libraries Unlimited-ABC-Clio. Just turning the pages and seeing how it looks in print is exciting, and it's out as an ebook too, although I haven't seen that yet. If you want to order it you can go to the abc-clio.com website or of course, try amazon.com.

Do you follow the golden rules?

Librarians were among the first to embrace the usefulness of technology in helping our patrons find the information they need. Still, it's useful to remind ourselves every once in a while that it's easy to be complacent about the computers and databases that we have offered the children in our libraries and schools. Technology has gone far beyond the computer lab and shelf of DVDs in the corner of the library. The interactive Web is here and it is important to let our children use it. Read this important article from Media Shift about the 7 Golden Rules of Technology in Schools. It is important to allow children access to the social media they will be using in the real world outside the school and library. Perhaps the most important rule of all is the one about the "F--- Word" That word is FEAR--fear of offending some teacher or parent by allowing a child to stray off the tried and true tools of print. Some of the reason for this fear is the exaggerated sense that the Internet is filled with evil sites designed to hurt children. The truth is that this fear is overblown. Occasionally a child may stray into a site that shows some nudity or uses some inappropriate language, but almost all children react by giggling and pointing it out to their friends. They are not injured or offended by it and young children are usually not terribly interested. Of course, we have to keep an eye on what the kids are up to in the library, but we don't want to repeat the errors of librarians in mid-20th century who tore pages out of the "National Geographic" or worse still banned the magazine so that children would be protected from seeing an occasional indigenous woman wearing less clothing than would be seen on Main Street. Children are resilient, we need to trust them and to help them find their way through the new digital media, because this is the world we all live in now. The more we embrace change, including changes in technology, the more we help our children grow into the strong citizens who can face the new world fearlessly.

What about textbooks?

One of the many blogs that librarians in both public and school libraries will find useful is the one posted by David Warlick in which he covers new trends and ideas in education. Recently he has posted two takes on what textbooks will be like in the future. He proposes that they will be far more interactive than current textbooks. No longer will they strive to be "Centrally-Authoritative" and error free but will accept the fact that errors occur and will be self-correcting through social interaction. It's worth looking at the posting for June 26, which lists the characteristics of old and new textbooks. Now, some librarians may be shrugging off the idea of changes in textbooks as having any relevance to library books for children, but I think they are wrong. As the idea of interactivity--the importance of looking at books and other media as joint productions of writers and readers--grows, the changes will affect trade books as well as textbooks. And they will especially affect librarians who are the mediators between trade books and children just as teachers are the mediators between textbooks and children. As children become used to sharing ideas and giving input into their digital (surely these new textbooks will have to be digital) textbooks, they will want to have the same input into the books they read for pleasure. The importance of forums where children can react to their reading, post their responses, share opinions, and ask questions should not be underestimated. More and more libraries are moving into the 21st century as hubs of interaction rather than collections of static materials. Instead of seeing ourselves as offering objects to children, we will see ourselves as sharing with children the imaginative offerings of authors and illustrators. It's an exciting prospect and both adults and children will change and grow in the exchange.

Will they tweet to the President?

President Obama startled many pundits today by holding a twitter forum on TV. He answered some of the more than 50,000 questions that were tweeted for him. The content was similar to press conferences and other political commentary that we've heard for the past few years, but the method and media should make librarians think about process. The children who are in our libraries and schools these days are learning to communicate through social media as much as through traditional writing and talking. The time for arguing about what has been won and lost in the changing, whirling media world is over. It doesn't matter whether the skills of handwriting and public debating are being lost because most of the children of today will rarely or never need to use those. Librarians are naturally conservative when it comes to culture. We know the value of preserving literary and other intellectual content in book form, but we are living in today's world. We should help children to react to older artifacts like books through every technique of the digital world. We should help them feel at home with tweets and blogs; ebooks and vbooks. Today's children almost certainly will not be tweeting to whoever is president in 2024, but they will have been able to use the skills they develop today to adapt to new media in whatever form it takes. As librarians and teachers we will help them get there.