Libraries save us from piracy?

One of Publisher Weekly's most dynamic blogs, the PWxyz blog has called attention to something that often gets lost in the discussion about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and other discussions about the right of individuals to access content. Besides being technically unwieldly and probably unworkable, SOPA deprives people of the right to find out about digital content they might otherwise not encounter. For more than a century public libraries have served to let people find books, magazines, and other content they either never heard about or cannot afford to purchase. Most people learn to love a book or an author by reading material borrowed from a library--or sometimes from a friend. Reading it once, or listening to music once, isn't always enough, so library borrowers turn into buyers. That's been happening with books all these years and it can happen to ebooks too. Most people are willing to pay a reasonable amount of money to purchase material they want to keep as long as buying it is made convenient. Instead of helping libraries by allowing them to lend ebooks to their cardholders, many publishers have worked to restrict lending. Somehow they believe the model that has worked for a century and more in developing devoted readers won't work any more. Instead of trying to restrict use, publishers ought to work with libraries to enable more people access to both print and digital content. Readers, authors, and publishers all benefit from having a community invested in producing and consuming artistic content. Let's call for sanity instead of SOPA.

New twelve-step program for children's librarians

If you or your colleagues are suffering a bit of post-holiday letdown and back-to-work blahs, you may want to consider some changes that can energize the way you work. Instead of the same-old, same-old routine of familiar picture books for storytimes and lackluster class visits, resolve to try a few new tricks in 2012. Here are twelve suggestions for ways to make your services more interactive and exciting for children and librarians alike. Take advantage of all the new gadgets many children found under the Christmas tree this year. Welcome apps into your library; let children write blog posts on their smartphones and laptops; start using Facebook to tell the world about your library as well as your friends and causes. Here are twelve ideas—one for every month of the new year. Try them and see how you can chase away the doldrums.

Twelve Resolutions for 2012

1. Evaluate one new children’s app every week. Encourage others in your department to do the same.

2. Plan to attend one new conference, workshop or webinar this year—get your request for funding and time off in early to avoid disappointment.

3. Set up an advisory group of tweens or teens who are frequent library users. Take their suggestions seriously.

4. Start a work journal—at the end of every day (or the beginning of the next one) jot down what tasks you worked on, what you accomplished, a new idea that came to you. Keep the notes to use for annual reports or grant proposals.

5. Feature at least one graphic novel in every book display you mount in your library or on your website

6. Contribute an item about children’s services to the library’s Facebook page at least once a month

7. Volunteer for a committee of your state or national library association

8. Practice taking pictures with your smartphone or camera so you can document your programs or materials (Don’t forget to get parental permission before posting kid’s photos online.)

9. Contact your local PTA and try to speak to a group of parents at least once each semester—preferably at the beginning of the school term.

10. Exchange visits with other libraries in your region—once a month or once a season see what other children’s librarians in your area are doing.

11. Make your summer reading program an interactive experience by setting up a blog for middle-grade participants.

12. Open a twitter account and tweet about what your library is doing. Follow as many other children’s librarians as you can find.

Making the Most of the Neglected Years

Occasionally an article appears in a newspaper or journal that appears to have little connection with libraries or education but which, on second thought, offers insights into children’s services. The NY Times published a piece this week about how scientists are turning their attention to changes in children during the middle childhood period of 5 or 6 to 10 or 11 years of age. These crucial years, before the turmoil of adolescence are a time when children’s brains are becoming more adult-like. Almost all societies offer special roles to children as they enter middle childhood and become capable of taking responsibility for adult-like tasks. In many pastoral societies, young girls are given the responsibility of caring for younger siblings, in some communities they learn to prepare family meals; boys learn to watch flocks and tend livestock or they learn the rudiments of hunting. In Western societies there is no comparable assigning of tasks. Few families expect 7 or 8-year-olds to babysit or help much in the house or garden. The acknowledgement of a child’s growing maturity at this time is marked by starting school and learning the developmental tasks of highly-developed societies—learning to read, to calculate, and to understand the tools we depend on in our daily life. All teachers, librarians, and parents acknowledge the importance of school in our culture and especially the importance of learning to read, but for the most part we don’t think about school as an introduction to adult work. All too often school is thought of as an interlude—a chance to get children cared for during the day and keeping them out of mischief. The tasks of school are often considered artificial lessons that must be mastered in order to pass tests and achieve recognition.

The scientists who study middle childhood have noted that these years are the time when children begin to be noticed and brought into society. In infancy and early childhood, in many cultural settings, babies and children are almost ignored. Sometimes they are not even given names until they reach the middle childhood years of becoming useful. No other creature has the long, extended growing-up period that human children have, and of course the period has become more prolonged as human work has become more complex. Perhaps it would be useful for more of us to think about the wonderful period of middle childhood when, with a brain grown to adult size, children are poised to learn more quickly and easily than they will during other periods of life. School age children are ready to be challenged with new tasks, new knowledge and new insight into other people. Most librarians have noticed that these middle-childhood years often coincide with a greater interest in reading than most people will have in later life. These are the years when we should offer children a rich and varied diet of books and other media that will stimulate their imagination and also give them a grounding in the realities of the world around them. All too often libraries become so fascinating by the joys of picture books and storytimes for toddlers that the slightly older school aged children are neglected. We are lucky that scientists are pointing out the importance of this life stage and as librarians and teachers we should take advantage of some of the new insights to offer the best we have to children starting their years of adult responsibility.

A man who understood children

Some books for children capture the spirit of childhood so memorably that they linger in the mind for years. How many adults are there who can still repeat lines from the Curious George books, or those of Dr. Seuss? This week the world lost another artist who captured children's hearts and minds in his series of Frances books--Russell Hoban. Starting with "Bedtime for Frances" in the late 1950s, Russell Hoban showed a child's life in the furry face of a badger. Frances went through many of the perils of young childhood. The story of "Bread and Jam for Frances", which describes how Frances clung to the security of bread and jam for a meal echoed a situation found in many households. The security of eating what you know you like and refusing to be tempted into trying something new like a squishy fried egg, is a sentiment that most of us can identify with. As Russell Hoban grew older, he turned to writing novels for adults. These were inventive and well-received and no doubt linger in many people's minds, but the books that will finally bring him immortality are probably the Frances books. Even after seventy years, the stories are as fresh and new as ever and as parents age into grandparents and great-grandparents they will no doubt continue to read them to eager children.

Should we hold classes in the library?

Keeping the distinction between the library and the classroom has been a theme in conferences and articles for years. Libraries provide materials--teachers teach students the ideas and concepts needed in classes. But does this distinction really hold any more? As the library, whether in a public library or a school, evolves into an information center providing access not just to print or AV materials but to streams of information, it becomes more like a classroom than ever. Indeed, what is a classroom these days when many students get their online or homeschooling courses at home? The family kitchen or a child's bedroom becomes a classroom and eventually children may complete their K-12 education without ever setting foot in what generations have called a school or classroom.

These thoughts are conjured up by two recent articles. One, in the NY Times tells of how the well-known Kahn Academy classes available on YouTube are being used as the bases for classes in some schools around the country. In the conventional classroom setting where every child has a laptop and a high-speed connection, the teacher can monitor the progress of individual students going through the math classes available through Kahn Academy videos. This combination of individualized online and face-to-face instruction may be a model for future learning.

The second article, also from the NY Times appeared this summer. It tells of an experiment by Stanford University to offer online courses free to anyone who signs up for them. More than 100,000 people did sign up and even though thousands of them dropped out after a short time, thousands others are still working their way through the courses and clearly learning from them.

What does this have to do with the role of libraries? Well, it's hard to believe that if these courses exist and are freely available to the public, a library could easily be a center for distributing them. Libraries can provide a quiet space and a fast Internet connection, advantages not available to many people living on the edges of poverty. Although most libraries, at their present level of funding, cannot provide individuals to help students and guide them through the process, they still could make the programs available to parents and young people. Most libraries have not considered offering a variety of online courses as part of their resource mix, but surely provision of these materials would increase the visibility of libraries in the community. Learning groups could be formed just like today's reading groups where like-minded individuals could meet together to engage with stimulating materials. It's a new twist to the library mix and one that should be considered as part of the move to make a library the center of the school or of the community in which it is located.

What do we do about apps?

Children's librarians are experts on picture books--we take this for granted. We know how to evaluate them, share them with children, choose the appropriate book for an individual child and even, in our professional groups, choose the best books of the year. We award the most prestigious prizes for children's books. But now we are coping with a new technology tht may be confusing and even make us feel hostile. Children and parents are choosing to buy their picture books in the form of apps that they look at on the screen of an i-pad, i-phone or a Kindle fire. A few pioneering public libraries loan i-Pads and quite a few schools offer them routinely to children, but for many librarians this whole area is a mystery. What's the future of apps in libraries? Here are some of the questions:
--Will we ever be able to loan apps separately from the equipment for viewing them?
--Most apps are very cheap, but they are not high quality. How can we encourage better apps?
--How are we going to catalog and keep track of apps if we circulate them?

These questions deserve a lot of thought, although it's not clear that the library profession is spending their time that way. For a start, you might read the Children's Apps Manifesto
put together by two savvy tech people who have thought about the pricing structure of apps and what business models best serve the needs of parents and children. The manifesto doesn't address the needs or interests of libraries, but that will come if librarians make their voices heard. While the purchase of apps is a growing trend for middle-and-upper-class families, they still haven't saturated society. If you traveled by air on Thanksgiving Weekend, you probably saw lots of kids in airports clutching little electronic screens enjoying picture book apps. If you traveled by Greyhound bus, as I did, you more likely saw a kid with a plastic bag holding a battered book from Walmart. Libraries are the great equalizers. We should be sure to make our voices heard in the discussions about the future of children's apps. Our patrons will want them and while we don't ever want to give up books, we should add the excitement and possibilities of apps to the mix. Let's pay attention and make sure the children in our libraries get their share.

Another step backward

Libraries are finding that their patrons, just like other readers, are looking more and more for ebook formats. Over the past year, there has been a sharp growth in the provision of ebooks in libraries. But now, once again, a publisher is pulling back and trying to turn the clock back to the days of all-print. Penguin publishing announced it would no longer make its new books available for borrowing in libraries. The reason given was a vague worry about security, but no one I've talked to can figure out what that worry would be. The more likely reason is a specific worry about sales of books. That's a legitimate concern, publishers after all are in business to make money, but many of them seem determined to ignore what the public wants. Most likely the average reader will not buy the Penguin ebook but will look for another book from a different publisher to borrow from the library. We don't live in a world where many people can afford to buy all the books they would like to read. That's why public libraries are becoming more popular week by week. Instead of pulling all its books from the library market, Penguin should try to work out a model that would give a fair profit to writers and publishers without making most books inaccessible to the audience that wants to read them. This is especially important for the youthful readers who cannot possibly purchase books for themselves. Very few families buy books for their children, not with the prices being charged by publishers. Libraries are the major source most children have for reading materials. Let's not cut down on the supply but work to increase it. Publishers and librarians both stand to gain from an increase in reading. Let's work together to make it possible to fill the need for good books.

Some help from the scientists

Children's librarians usually have great faith that in intoducing young children to reading books and stories they are helping them grow into the kind of adults we want to have in our communities. We believe that reading stories about children in difficult situations or those scarred by war or hardship helps the reader sympathize with other people. Sometimes this is known as the "library faith"--the belief that reading literature is good in itself and produces desirable results.Now several academic psychologists have tested this theory and discovered that it can be empirically demonstrated. In his article "In the Minds of Others" in Scientific American Keith Oatley describes how scientists looked at this problem. Oatley and his colleagues at the University of Toronto studied the social skills of a group of adults who were readers of either fiction or nonfiction. They found that the more fiction people read, the better they were at perceiving emotion in the eyes of the people in photographs they were shown. The fiction readers were also a little better at correctly interpreting social clues from the photos.

In a follow-up experiment with preschool children, another group of scientists demonstrated that children who were read stories were better able to separate the feelings of another person from their own feelings. They could put themselves in the mind of a person who preferred a carrot snack to a sweet and correctly assess which snack the individual would choose. In an interesting related finding, it was found that while reading (or being read to) improved social empathy, watching television had no such effect.

It is heartening to find some evidence that the beliefs we librarians have held for years are proving to be valid. Years of experience have taught us that children who read stories, like adults who read, may indeed gain the ability to empathize and understand other people. Surely that is a good enough reason for us to continue our work of encouraging reading.

Watch the tech page for further developments

Many librarians have been reading the Publisher's Weekly list of best children's books and it's certainly worth looking over. But also today we got another reminder that the book news isn't the only news we should be following if we want to serve our patrons well. The good old NY Times once again reported important news in its technology colums. Peter Wayner has written a fascinating article about one of the newest opportunities in the digital world, several new computer programming languages which have been developed for children. Now this may be a subject librarians haven't thought too much about because programming is usually a classroom or afterschool subject, but these new languages may change that. New tools like Scratch and Alice allow children to cooperate to produce simple video games and animated films. These tools are not for the faint of heart or those who want to have spectacular results in five minutes. They require patience and work, but they lead children into the pleasure of expressing their creativity. Surely the library, whether school or public, is a good home for this kind of extracurricular project. In a world where children spend far more time interacting with screens than they do with books, we should encourage them to use their creativity to create stories and explore the possibilities of media literacy as well as print literacy. The children in our libraries today may develop a whole new kind of book for the future and that's exactly the kind out outcome we want to encourage.

Can librarians solve the STEM shortage?

Educators were discouraged to read in a recent NY Times article that young people who move from high school to college aiming to major in one of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subjects, often drop out of that major long before they graduate. Despite the emphasis that the Obama administration, backed by business and political leaders across the country, have emphasized in recent years is that America needs more workers who can handle the complex engineering and technical demands of the modern workplace. The call has been for 10,000 new engineers a year and 100,000 new teachers in the STEM area. Why in this time of high unemployment don’t young people answer the call? The reasons are complex, but one of the most discouraging is that many middle school and high school students are enthusiastic about science and technology. When they enter college and endure the large classes taught in lecture format that most schools still mount for freshmen, they become bored and lose interest. The humanities and social sciences with more discussion and more projects (not to mention higher grades overall) tempt them away from their original plans. It’s clear that reforms are needed in college teaching, but what has this to do with children’s librarians? More than you might think.

One way children become interested in science, and one way of keeping them involved, is giving them books and other resources to whet their interest. And some of the best science writing being done these days is for children. Just take a look at some of the books listed on ALSC’s 2011 Notable Books for Children list:

Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature

The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe

Nic Bishop Lizards

Bones: Skeletons and How They Work

The Bat Scientists



Every one of those books is memorable. And of course these are only the beginning. As children move into high school, there are equally good books available. The YALSA award lists include many of them. Adult books too are suitable for many teenagers, including the bestseller Destiny of the Republic a biography of James Garfield which has an unusual emphasis on the history of medicine.

The wealth of nonbook media based on STEM subjects offers riches. ALA’s list of Great Websites for Kids is a start, but the possibilities are large. New games, apps, podcasts, and videos can help keep young people engaged in the excitement of discovery and problem solving. Isn’t it time for librarians to take some responsibility for the dearth of American scientists rather than just tut-tutting about how many jobs have to be filled from abroad? Even though the easy way for librarians to increase circulation is to push an endless series of books about vampires, werewolves, and superheroes, maybe we have some responsibility to open new areas to our patrons, not to just serve up warmed-over fantasy. We don't have to give up fantasy (and wouldn't want to) but just to be sure that there is a strong reinforcement for fact-based books about the exciting challenges waiting for young people to deal with as they move out into the world. The more strongly their love of science, engineering, and technology is supported not just through classes but also through the strong emotional pull of books, the more likely they are to stick with their dreams and make them come true. Think about it!