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.

The apps they are a'coming

By this time almost every librarian and teacher has seen children's apps on i-Pads, i-phones, and other mobile devices. Will we have them in our libraries soon? Children clamor for them and parents approve, so it looks as though we will. We might as well get ready to examine them and think about standards that will help us to judge them. To work toward that end, School Library Journal sponsored a panel discussion last week, "The Children's App Landscape" during which editors, app producers, and librarians discussed what made a good app.Lisa Von Drasek, a children's librarian at the Bank Street College of Education, defined what librarians want from apps: "We want story. We want art. We want developmental appropriateness." Sounds pretty much the same as what we want from books, doesn't it? Can apps meet the test? Well, some of the best apps are certainly passing with flying colors. Virginia Duncan, an editor at Greenwillow, pointed out reasons for the success of the app made from Freight Train by Donald Crews, noting that the art is clean, the type fits the image, the font is legible even on a small screen, and the story is linear. Probably everyone who is familiar with the book Freight Train (and what librarian isn't?) can visualize how well it would adapt to the digital format. Not all children's picture books appear to be such a good match for a different format, but with the help of committed artists, producers, and editors, many of them will undoubtedly be successfully transformed. It's up to librarians and teachers to figure out how best to integrate these apps into our collections and make them available to children. Probably ALSC will soon come up with a new committee to award a medal for the best app of the year. It is an exciting prospect. Don't miss the fun!

Where are children's apps going?

Children's publishing is changing so quickly that even the publishers can't keep up with it. At the Digital Book World conference recently, some of the leading producers of children's apps talked about their works. As reported by Calvin Reid in Publishers Weekly, their work will greatly impact libraries, although there is no mention of this in the story. Children's books are moving off the printed page and into a world of apps where the stories will be told in a combination of video, animation, audio and text. These stories, which are available on many mobile media, are already attracting many parents and children will certainly grow in appeal. From the readers' point-of-view the sound and movement that augment the text are the most important aspects of the new form. From the producers' point-of-view, the ability to update the apps and to track usage are equally attractive. Why is this so important for librarians? One reason is that libraries had better learn to compete with this competition by offering attractive books as well as apps for young children. Another, equally important reason, is that in this fast-growing field, librarians have important expertise to share. We are the specialists in what children enjoy listening to and sharing. For generations librarians have turned static books into lively experiences through storyhours. In the early 1920s when the children's book industry was gathering strength in the book world, children's librarians like Anne Carroll Moore influenced publishing trends by reviewing books and calling on publishers to meet children's needs. Where are the Anne Carroll Moores of today? Now is the time for library journals to take apps seriously and offer full reviews of the best of them. Rick Richter, one of the producers quoted in the article maintains that of the approximately 30,000 children's apps now available "about 27,000 of them are horrible". It's time for the industry to take into account the expertise of teachers and librarians as well as book publishers to develop standards for excellence in children's apps. Perhaps it is time for ALA to set up a new prize category.