What do teens and toddlers have in common? Quite a bit! I attended a session from the Brooklyn Public Library outlining their StoryTeen program. This paid internship program gives teens the opportunity to explore early learning concepts and careers.
Tag: Volunteers
Go Vols!: Volunteers Needed for ALSC Committees – Appointments Begin in Early 2018
With a title like “Go Vols!” You might think I’m rooting for a favorite college football team. While I’m not enthusiastically sharing my team spirit, I am fervently hoping to see an ALSC volunteer form from each and every one of you! ALSC has greatly benefited from the hard work of all our volunteers who offer to serve the association in various capacities. I began my career in children’s librarianship several years before I became involved in ALSC. But, once I made the right connections at the urging of my mentor, I stumbled upon the amazing work of previous generations of ALSC members and decided to join in the goodness. I started small – with a volunteer form, of course – on the ALSC Intellectual Freedom committee from there I served on an award committee, the Nominating committee, and several taskforces and working groups, mainly related to collaborative work with…
Create New Community Partnerships With A Volunteer Fair
A volunteer fair is able to recruit volunteers and increase public awareness of their mission while the library is able to connect its patrons with meaningful service opportunities.
Using Volunteers to Expand the Walls of the Library
Laurie Willhalm started off this session by telling the history of Books for Wider Horizons, an outreach program of the Oakland Public Library that sends well-trained storytime readers into childcare centers and preschools in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. They started with about 3 volunteers and have grown over the past 20 years into a corps to 60 volunteers making 71 weekly storytime visits to 1300 kids at 31sites! Celia Jackson explained the logistics of how the program works: They are continually recruiting, in order to replace volunteers who drop out or retire. The m ajority of their volunteers are reached by word of mouth, and they also list themselves on a website called Volunteer Match. Careful screening is key to ensuring that the volunteers area good match for this program and understand the training and time commitments. There is a wirten application with references (which they carefully check), and a…
Spellcasting and Singing
#alsc14 Maxim of the Day: Sometimes you’ve gotta sing outside of the shower. Take it from Gay Ducey, a speaker on the “Using Volunteers to Expand the Walls/Books for Wider Horizons” panel. She warmed up Thursday’s #alsc14 audience by asking us to stand up and sing the storytime smash hit “To Stop the Train”–several times in a row. Singing not only works with kids, but is an effective tool when leading a storytime training for adult volunteers: people loosen up, get active, and have fun. After this clever icebreaker activity, their brains are primed to soak up the content rich presentation that follows. She also emphasizes to volunteers that their storytime presentations will make a lasting impression on kids. “Storytimes are a kind of spell children need to have.” By creating this special timeless moment in a child’s life, a storytime volunteer is helping the child associate reading with fun…
Recruiting Supermodels #alsc14
I was a pint-sized model. In 4th grade, I read aloud storybooks to friends at an after school daycare center that I attended. At the time, I had no idea that this experience would prepare me for my career as a children’s librarian. And I certainly had no idea that I was imparting a love of reading to my listeners–my peers. Speakers at today’s “Inspired Collaboration: Early Childhood Partnerships” made me recall this memory when they talked about how they recruit everyday library users to model experiences for potential library users. As a professional, you can tell patrons about a service and model it for them yourself. But sometimes people may feel most inspired to try something new when they see someone just like themselves doing an activity. One of the presenters shared a story about how mothers in a housing community receive early literacy training. In turn, these mothers…
Volunteers – in their own words
Library volunteers come in all ages, and they do everything from shelving DVDs to holding book sales. It takes time to train and manage them, but the pay-off is vast. We’ve had an amazing volunteer program at our library for over 20 years. The idea is simple – we train adult volunteers to share books and stories with kids at the library. First called “Grandparents and Books” because our volunteers were older adults, it later became just GAB when we began welcoming younger adults as well. This July 1st, we’re changing the name again – to Storytelling and Reading, or STAR – so that the theme of the program will be more immediately apparent. Whatever the name, it has been a spectacularly successful program, and this is due almost entirely to the enthusiasm and passion of our volunteers, many of whom have been with us for 5, 10 and even…