The summer season at our library is just about upon us. The reading portion will begin June 1st and the heavy-programming begins June 13th. Though we are busy getting the last pieces of our program’s structure into place for the launch next week, I’m not too busy to take a minute to rant (it comes quite naturally to me!) You can consider this post, Part 5 of my Attack on Summer Reading series. If you haven’t been following along with baited breath, the other posts are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. In April, I talked a bit about the information we gather through registration and reading tracking and what we do with it and don’t do with it. Turns out, there are some helpful info-bits in there (shocker!) My library director, who is totally supportive of our switch-up, really wanted us to find a way to…
Category: Blogger Kelley Beeson
Summer Reading, No! But Reading in the Summer, Yes!
I’m back with more anti-summer reading ranting! Interested in reading (or re-reading) the whole diatribe? Here are the previous entries: Part I, Part II, Part III where I’ve noted issues around how/if the traditional summer reading model supports non-readers; SRP tracking and registration; and learning vs. reading as the program’s focus. This month, I’m thinking hard about assessment and evaluation again. Here we are, a little less than 2 months before the summer season starts. And I’m feeling it! My stress level is a bit high these days (but calmed weekly with Netflix, the local Y and chocolate banana bread!) But I’m excited too. This will be a very different summer for my library and I’m eager to see how it all goes. Since there will be no registration for the reading portion, the only thing from which we’ll gather information is our big LEGO 3D infographic that will definitely give us an idea of how…
Continuing The Anti-Summer Reading Rant, Plan and Discussion
Onward! If you’re following along with my anti-SRC rants, we’ve arrived at Part III. If you’re not, here’s Part I and Part II. So our summer plan is shaping up. We’ve decided to totally forgo a kickoff (gasp!) and just jump right in. Last month (in Part II) I asked some questions about tracking and registration. After some discussion here at my library, we’ve decided to cut the registration completely. We’re not asking anyone their name, age, school, email or address. It’s a risk, but we’re willing to try it out. I think one of the irritations for families is the registration process which (if you’re anything like the libraries in my county) seems to change every single year. So we’re just going to let people start reading! And as registration goes hand in hand with tracking, we’ve also given some serious thought to the tracking process. That can be quite a…
Asking the Hard Questions: SRC Tracking and Registration
You may remember my post from last month about my library tossing the traditional approach to our Summer Reading Club. We’ve had a few brainstorming sessions and it’s already feeling really different. Our conversations about it feel lighter, more exciting, more engaging. While we’re not total renegades, we have decided to completely do away with registration for the reading portion. And we’re still ramping up our programming, but we’re really looking at how and why to track participants’ reading progress. For years, I’ve battled the dastardly demons of registration and tracking. Should we register and track online? Should we go old school and do paper logs? Family registrations? Should we track hours or titles? Should we ask for addresses? Should participants have to create usernames and passwords? Should we offer incentives? Cheap trinkets or gift certificates? A grand prize? The registration part is really there for us the librarians and our obsession with numbers. And those…
I’m Saying It: Down with Summer Reading Club
OK, not totally down with it, but now that I have your attention… see, at my library, we’re looking hard at what our SRC has become and asking ourselves what we really want for the kids in our community over the summer. And I’m not sorry to say, it’s a heckuva lot more than sitting in a room reading 30 books over the summer – and maybe (eek!) it’s not that at all! For about 5 years now, I’ve felt like the traditional SRC structure is outdated and only serving avid/passionate readers. And frankly, those readers will read no matter what. What I want for my kids in the summer, is great ways to have fun, get engaged, get involved, meet new people, relax, and through allllllllllll of that, maybe learn a few things. But see, it’s the fun, engaging, involved, meeting and relaxing bits I want to focus on….
Technology and SRCs: Hub vs. Heart
Recently, there have been a number of intriguing conversations in the KidLib blogosphere around summer reading and why we do it. My interest piqued when I read Transliteracy in Your Summer Reading Program by Gretchen Caserotti at the Libraries and Transliteracy blog. I learned about another thought-provoking blog post about SRC over at Hi Miss Julie: Summer Reading, Pain in My… it includes some tasty comments that led to even more posts about summer reading here and here. If you have a minute or two, those posts are rather inspiring. As many of you know by now, I get pretty excited around technology. I get especially excited about technology in SRCs. I’m definitely in the ‘let’s rework that sacred cow of summer reading club’ camp. I really believe SRCs need to change. And pretty drastically. Families are different. Society is different. And not to mention literacy is now literacies. We have…
Jumping In
Quietly ignoring the changing landscape of library services is getting trickier. Though it still happens, often at the expense of the eager digital minds with which we work. Transliteracy (literacy across multiple media) is a big part of what kids need to make it in the 21st Century and many of us are not part of the mechanism that’s equipping them with those skills. I’ve been in my position as a Youth Services Coordinator for a large library system now 5 years and when I started, blogs, wikis, RSS-that whole Library 2.0 thing was just getting underway and I know there are libraries who continue to resist taking advantage of tools that not only make our jobs easier like Delicious, RSS, wikis and Google Docs but tools that kids/tweens/teens greatly benefit from as part of their education and in their personal lives. As information specialists, it’s our duty to get with…
Technology: Finding Balance and Inspiring Families To Do the Same
Anyone who knows me, knows I heart technology. My IT husband hearts it even more, so in our house we’re always working to find some balance between ‘life’ and technology. I know they often intersect, but sometimes we struggle to avoid evenings and weekends in front of a screen – as tempting as it sometimes is! I imagine many parents and kids with whom you work probably struggle with this too. On the one hand, we have that whole transliteracy thing going on (which is the ability to read and write across a range of platforms) where we want kids to be able to thrive in all of these cool technological ways but on the other hand, we have Enough Already with the technology! So how do you help your families (and yourself perhaps!) get to a place of balance? I offer a few tips (some of which I got…