As co-chair of the Early and Family Research Committee, I’ve spent a lot of the last year thinking about research. Our members find scholarly research relating to early literacy and synthesize it to share to ALSC members as part of the Early and Family Literacy Research Database. However, earlier this year, I was reminded that research doesn’t just have to be finding peer-reviewed studies, diving into data, and pouring over bibliographies. Research can be diving into best practices for a new program, or uncovering a new side of something you think about every day. It can be blog posts (like this one), documentaries, websites, and more. For all this committee loves our academic, peer-reviewed research, we also love supporting fact finding and strengthening of early literacy practices in all ways. Often falling down a research rabbit hole might start somewhere you don’t ever expect to see it. For me, It…
Category: Research
New Research on the Ecosystem that is Changing Early Literacy in NYC
I’m sure everyone reading this has had the privilege of experiencing that magical moment when a child receives a new book. Their eyes light up, they start talking about the picture on the cover, and immediately open the pages. These magical moments happen all across New York City, in libraries, child care centers, community based organizations, and in health clinics.
Four Exciting Treasures from the Baldwin Library
As my time at the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature wound down in August, I found myself finalizing my time with my research boxes of choice (the Margaret Sidney papers) and beginning to ask the staff to bring me other little treasures within the archive, some of which I requested just so I could hold them in my own hands. The Baldwin Library is a treasure trove of historic children’s literature materials, and if you are the next Bechtel fellow, here are just a few of the exciting little things you can get your hands on too:
Before Highlights, There Was Wide Awake
Many, many librarians are familiar with the magazine Highlights. Published for nearly 80 years at this point, it was a staple of childhood doctor’s visits, subscription gifts from aunts and uncles, and school-based activities. The familiar red parallelogram logo calls to mind “What’s wrong?” picture puzzles and word searches. Founded in the 1940s, generations of readers recall this family-friendly, kid-focused publication with fondness, but for the generations that raised them, another children’s magazine might come to mind: Wide Awake.
Saving Stories: My First Week at the Baldwin Library
Almost seven months after finding out I was the 2025 ALSC Bechtel Fellow, I journeyed down to Gainesville, Florida to officially begin my research at the Baldwin Library of Children’s Literature, and by the end of my first week, I had unearthed a secret undertone of my project that made me feel like a storytelling saver, not just an avid researcher and reader.
DCPL’s Illustrator Collection: An Interview with Wendy Lukehart
From 1919 to 1948, Louise Payson Latimer was the Director of Work with Children at the Washington (DC) Public Library. Latimer received frequent requests for “hard-to-access visual material” as well as general community members who were interested in the illustrations within children’s books during her tenure with the system. This prompted her to initiate the DC Public Library’s Illustrator Collection. At the time, Latimer recommended that the library purchase upwards of 800 picture books that she deemed worthy of “merit”. The collection now houses upwards of 20,000 primarily British and American books, many of which are first editions. To find out more about this interesting and unique collection, I interviewed Wendy Lukehart. Wendy is the Youth Collections Coordinator at DC Public Library and author of the article Louise Payson Latimer: Pioneer of Library Service to Children in Washington, DC. Wendy has become a fierce advocate for the collection, and one…
The Ripples We Make – Reflective Assessment in Children’s and Youth Services
We live and work in a hectic world that prizes always doing more. It’s important to take a moment to breathe, step back, and look at where we’ve been in our practice as professionals. Reflective assessment can be a way to do this. Assessment refers to gathering information about something you are doing to determine progress and effect meaningful growth (Campana, Mills, & Ghoting, 2016). Assessment data can give you the basis for an advocacy story to share the ways in which you are having an impact through your work. This can, in turn, inform your own professional development. Another way to think about assessment is that it’s about understanding what has taken place so that you can continue to strengthen what you do and how you do it. Traditionally library staff have relied heavily on outputs as ways to conduct assessment to understand the impacts of their programs, collections,…
Write about Your Research
Turning Slides into a Children and Libraries Article You’ve done it! You’ve presented at a conference. Your slide deck was beautiful, you only stumbled over a few words, and you got great audience questions at the end…now what? Do you go back to your office and simply go on with your day, referencing this presentation on your resume and maybe LinkedIn and never touch it again? No–you take that research you’ve already done and turn it into a written article for ALSC’s preeminent journal, Children and Libraries.