ALSC Mentoring Project

One of the benefits of technology is the ability to meet and collaborate with other library professionals from across the United States (even the world!). This fall, ALSC began its first mentoring program matching professionals interested in library service to children together to foster collaboration, communication, and education.

I was paired with JoAnna Schofield from the Akron-Summit County Public Library system.   I’m a Youth Services librarian for Broward County Library in South Florida.  JoAnna and I immediately discovered we had a few things in common.  She has three kids, and I have four.  Both of us knew what it was like to try and balance work and family.  Even more compelling, both of us have been touched by autism.  For JoAnna, it was her sister.  For me, my son. Because we both have an interest in autism, we decided to create goals for our mentorship experience that concentrated on library programs for autistic children and their families. My library in South Florida recently began planning a program for preschoolers with autism as part of a grant by Autism Speaks.  This grant by Autism Speaks is a part of their project “Making Public Libraries Accessible for Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders”.   JoAnna’s library is exploring library services to children with special needs, and they will be conducting in-service training on the topic in the spring of 2014.

After talking about potential goals, we came up with three to focus on.  Our first goal is to put together a resource list that would be beneficial for a library structuring services for children with Autism.  This resource could contain books that would be useful in a storytime as well as parental resources.  Our second goal is to create plans for social skills story times by choosing books that focused on specific life skills. For example stories could include “Going to the library and what to expect”, “How to make a friend”, “Taking turns”, etc.  Lastly, our third goal is to explore the development of a program for the siblings of children with special needs so they also can experience a positive library experience and connect with other children in similar situations. This is important since it can be very difficult to deal with the challenges of having a sibling on the autistic spectrum or other disabilities not to mention the difficulties of watching your parent(s) juggle their time between you and the various therapy visits that they need to do for their sibling.

By writing blog posts over the course of our mentorship, it is our hope to be able to dispel some of the fears and concerns that go with starting a storytime for children on the autistic spectrum.  It is normal for people who have not worked with children with disabilities to feel a little unsure or uncomfortable initially.  I’m hoping as we share this experience during the year, more may explore library programs and services for children with disabilities and their families. Please feel free to comment and share what your library is doing to reach and serve this community!

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Our guest bloggers today are Susan Ostroff and JoAnna Schofield who wrote this article together. For simplicity’s sake, they wrote the article as if it was from Susan’s perspective to avoid pronoun confusion.

Susan is  a Youth Services librarian for Broward County Library.   She  enjoys coming up with interesting program ideas and teaching others how to use databases. One of her goals is to develop more programs in the library for children and their families with special needs. She is married and the mom to four kids, two Labrador Retrievers and two pet Dumbo rats.  In her spare time, you will find her partaking in her photography hobby and occasionally some cake decorating.  Her photos can be seen at http://www.susanostroff.com/  Her library can be visited at http://www.broward.org/library/

JoAnna is a children’s librarian at the Akron-Summit County Public Library in downtown Akron, Ohio. She passionately enjoys her toddler, preschool, and school age outreach, baby time series, and school age science and technology programs. She is eagerly awaiting the start of 2014 and her new Tech Tuesdays school age programs. Along with her participation in the ALSC Mentoring Program, she has recently accepted appointment on the 2015 (Theodor Seuss) Geisel Book Award Committee. Her inspiration comes from her three beautiful children: Jackson (3), Parker (2), and Amelia Jane (8 months). She can be reached at jschofield@akronlibrary.org.

Please note that as a guest post, the views expressed here do not represent the official position of ALA or ALSC.

If you’d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at alscblog@gmail.com.