Pursuing excellence for library service to children
Interview with Stephanie Smallwood, Youth Services Coordinator for the Springfield Greene County Library District discussing various ways to advocate for early literacy and libraries.
Storytime is a core element of my daily work as a public librarian. In my library system, we host 32 in-building storytimes across five locations. For my branch, we staff seven storytimes across three days. This count doesn’t include our outreach or partnership storytimes. Supporting storytimes takes on many different facets. The size of your library and the number of weekly storytimes offered may also impact these decisions. While I’ll share scalable ideas, it’s important to remember that each library has unique priorities and needs. While our patrons may only see one or two faces in storytime, the reality is that it takes an entire team for our storytimes to succeed. Over the years, there have been many iterations of what supporting storytime looks like. We’ve learned that for it to work, staff must be all in for storytime. How does that work? Let me tell you more.
In the last several decades, the landscape of public libraries changed from what one might consider a stereotypical book storehouse to an eclectic gathering space not just for materials, but for people. To remain relevant in their communities, public libraries adapted to this shift in focus, working to provide more versatile and technological resources for their community members. One trend in particular that has sprung from this change is the concept of makerspaces. A relatively young concept as far as technology goes, this idea has taken root and managed to establish itself in libraries across the country. It is believed that the concept of “making” was first discussed in 2005, as part of an article in Make – a magazine that published information regarding maker projects. Since then, many libraries have taken the steps to build their own makerspaces filled with different types of technology. At the very least, most…
Have you heard of GELS? It’s an acronym from the Connecticut State Library that represents their initiative Growing Equitable Library Services. This session was presented by Kymberlee Powe, their Children’s/YA Consultant, one of the programs co-creators. What does growing equitable library services mean? We often hear the phrase “Libraries are for everyone,” but we don’t always think about how big that term really is. Everyone means everyone, including groups that we may not know much about or who we may be personally uncomfortable with. We need to consciously think about how services for everyone actually exist in our libraries. The very idea of equity is about everyone getting what they need to succeed, which may look very different for different individuals or groups. This workshop series is all about helping libraries become strength-based, trauma-informed, antiracist, social- and emotionally-conscious community institutions. Content was purposefully selected with the ultimate goal of growing…