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!

Books that disappear in the night

Halloween booklists are a familiar handout in children’s libraries. Books about pumpkins, witches, and trick-or-treating fly off the shelves at this time of year. Parents, teachers and children expect to see old favorites and a few new entries every year. But in making up booklists this year, many librarians must have been struck by the variety of what they include—printed books, ebooks, apps for the i-phone and i-pad, as well as videos and websites for streaming stories of ghosts and goblins. Will these new formats become old favorites, or will they be replaced by stories in newer formats? Will the apps of today become the filmstrips of thirty years ago crumbling in a forgotten corner of the storage closet? What is a book now and what will it be in the future.
This week the Internet Archive hosted a Books in Browsers” conference in San Francisco to explore this question. Is the print book dead? It seems unlikely, but it is worth keeping up with ideas for new formats no matter how off-the-wall some of them seem. A traditional book is written by one person and after it is edited and printed it cannot easily be changed or modified in any way even by the original author. A digital book, on the other hand, exists only as a bundle of electrons that can be altered—updated by the author, which is useful—or hacked and changed by other people, which is a problem. When librarians buy an ebook for their collection, they are purchasing it with the faith that enough of their readers have the necessary equipment and will be able to read it to justify the purchase. What happens if the technology of a book becomes obsolete? Like old tape recorder tapes or vinyl records will they become useless to the vast majority of readers who no longer have the equipment to access them? When we buy a new Halloween classic for our collection, what assurance do we have that it will remain permanently in our collection? Will it disappear silently some day because the publisher has decreed that it has circulated as often as is allowed? Will it become unusable? Should we purchase at least one print copy of each item we buy in digital format to ensure that our collection remains usable? As librarians go about their day-to-day business, especially during this busy fall holiday season, we may not think enough about the long-term strategies of collection development, but we do so at our peril. There are stronger forces than witches and goblins about to snatch away our Halloween treasures!

How will we save the school band?

Libraries buy dozens of books and other media on topics they hope will increase students’ knowledge and improve their skills, but there are some subjects that are almost impossible to get moving off the shelves no matter how well designed the materials are. One of the worst is economics. It’s not surprising that it’s called the dismal science. Parents, teachers and other adults keep trying to instill the basics of economics into young people before they reach the age to start using credit cards and building up debts, but it’s hard to find materials that help. Now Warren Buffet has lent his name and knowledge to a series of cartoons designed to make learning economics a little more appealing. The series, called The Secret Millionaire’s Club, will be shown on Hub Channel. It is based on a series of web-based episodes that have been shown for the past year. Check out this video for a small snippet of one of these web-based animations. According to the show’s producers, the series will aim less at being a teaching tool and more on entertainment than the web episodes have done. Buffet is modest in his aims: “It’s not intended to teach kids how to read a balance sheet, it’s meant to provide a fun way for kids to understand business and develop good habits from an early age,” His approach is to set up a plausible real life problem that young teens might encounter, such as funding a school art project or band. Then he raises questions the youngsters need to answer their questions about how they might raise money. How well this format can be used to tackle other basic economic issues remains to be seen, but if the shows are well-done they would fill a real need in schools and libraries. The series starts today on the Hub channel. It has advertisers and several sponsors including the Public Library Association and the National Education Association. If you miss the show itself, the first episode should be available at www.hubworld.com on November 3. It’s well worth checking out.

Why are libraries invisible?

For those of us who are concerned with libraries and make them a part of our lives, it’s often discouraging to discover how many of our friends and neighbors don’t make libraries a central part of their thinking even when they try to encourage their children to read. I was reminded of this again reading a blog post by a mother concerned about her daughter’s reluctance to read. Mia Wenjen, the blogger, started by pointing out that the loss of the Border’s chain of bookstores is going to affect the reading habits of many children. There’s no argument about that and librarians and teachers across the country are mourning the loss of one of the few bookstores serving many communities. Nonetheless, in describing her technique for turning her daughter into a voracious reader, I was surprised at what a small role the library played. First on the list of steps to take to encourage your child to read was to make regular trips to the bookstores to buy books. There is nothing wrong with that, but very few families these days have access to bookstores; for many the only place to buy books is the scanty space in a big box store. Besides that, very few families have the money to spend on buying children’s books regularly. Another technique mentioned was for a parent to start a reading group. Again, this is a fine idea, but many libraries already have reading groups for children and they have a wide selection of books to support them. A reading group in a home is likely to have very limited access to books unless one or more of the families involved has an unusually wide selection of books at home. What was the problem with the library? Well, the short three-week borrowing period seemed to be the major one. That time was often too short for the girl to finish her book. Perhaps libraries should think about encouraging parents and children who find the borrowing period too short. Most libraries offer renewals online and by telephone, which lengthens the period to six weeks or even longer if others are not clamoring to take out the same book. Do we publicize this flexibility enough? Perhaps a renewal notice in each book that goes out would help some families. Most of all, the problem seems to be that many families that are trying hard to encourage their children to read do not know about library services available to them. Librarians often look around the busy library and notice the children who are there reading, sharing books, enjoying programs. They don’t see the children who rarely enter the building. Just because we work there every day doesn’t mean that all members of the community understand how many books and other materials are available. Mia Wenjen is right; the loss of so many bookstores is affecting the reading habits of many children in our communities. Now is a great time for librarians to step up their PR efforts and try harder than ever to remind people that despite financial cutbacks and hard times, the public and school libraries are still the best reading support in the community. We need to push that message out more than ever before.

Thinking about poetry

Libraries are probably the most poetry-friendly institutions in the country. For generations, youth librarians have introduced children to the pleasures of Mother Goose and the fun of Shel Silverstein by reading, performing, and encouraging children to react to the magic of words and rhythms. For the past decade and more librarians have organized poetry slams for teens, poetry clubs for tweens, and poetry week celebrations for the family. But we are seldom given credit for helping to keep the art alive. The New York Times in a recent article about poetry performances in New York City introduces us to a number of other venues where poetry is celebrated and not only read aloud but performed. It is a good reminder of the importance of oral performance for most poetry. New York isn't the only city with a number of of performance places for poets--San Francisco is a good example of a poetry-friendly city that offers public poetry in bars and restaurants. Why are bars such a popular place for poetry performances? No doubt it is the legendary ability of alcohol to loosen the tongue and inhibitions. Libraries have never been famous for that, and of course we don't recommend wine and cheese in the children's room, but the idea of food and informality might be something we could borrow. Why not have a popcorn and cider poetry performance for Halloween? Don't stick to the routine of having the librarian read from poetry books in the library, invite young readers and authors to perform their own poetry or read their favorites from the collection. Give young patrons a chance to practice their pieces beforehand. Record their offerings on video that can be linked to the library website and shared with the community. Let kids make their own poetry videos in other venues if they like--sports poetry on the football field or tennis courts, perhaps--and show them in the library. Link them to your Facebook page. Libraries have been keeping poetry vital and alive for a century, now that we have so many ways of sharing it, don't let that tradition die.

How social should libraries be?

Social media has been hotly debated by parents and other adults ever since youngsters started flocking to it and spending (it seems) hours posting silly and sometimes disturbing messages and photos on it. At first some school districts and public libraries assumed that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were time-wasters and students should not be allowed to use them in schools and libraries. But social media crept into our lives and gradually made it difficult to separate personal fooling around from serious learning. Now there is a movement to reverse the trend to ban websites from schools and children’s libraries. The American Association of School Librarians this year inaugurated a Banned Website Awareness Day designed to call attention to the problem. In a report on the growing trend toward freer access for young people to social media and other websites and the New York Times published an article this week describing some of the ways teachers use social media to advance studies. For example, in one Advanced Placement Biology class, lab groups created a Facebook thread to share data and collaborate on projects. Many educators believe that today’s young people will work in environments where shared projects are the norm and they will have to learn to use the tools of collaboration. By exposing young people to social media and to websites that might be considered offensive in schools and libraries, teachers can help students learn how to use the Internet safely and where to draw the line on offensive material. As generations of adults have learned over time it is almost impossible to shield young people from questionable information; it is far better to help them learn how to evaluate it. Librarians have been in the front lines of the fight against book censorship for many years; now is the time for us to extend our concern for books to other materials. As digital material in many formats becomes more and more a part of the life of young people, we should help them to decide how to handle it rather than try to build walls around our libraries. We are all interconnected now, so we might as well get used to it.