Internet

I chose the PUBYAC website, which is a resource for public libraries serving children and young adults. It can be accessed at http://www.pubyac.org.

Here is how the website describes its mission:
PUBYAC is an Internet discussion list concerned with the practical aspects of Children and Young Adult Services in Public Libraries, focusing on programming ideas, outreach and literacy programs for children and caregivers, censorship and policy issues, collection development, administrative considerations, puppetry, job openings, professional development and other pertinent services and issues.

The name PUBYAC amalgamates the most important aspects of the discussion: PUBlic libraries,
Young Adults, and Children.

I chose this website because it seems like a wonderful resource for professionals serving children in public libraries. Because I have been focusing on engaging early readers in the public library, it was very exciting to find this website. It provides an avenue for professionals to share ideas as well as issues and concerns, so that all can benefit.

I found the website by searching for my blog topic on Google.

Research Visual/Multimedia

These images come from a report of the National Center for Education Statistics called "Services and Resources for Children and Young Adults in Public Libraries." It was compiled by Sheila Heaviside and Elizabeth Farris of Westat, Inc.; Christina Dunn and Ray Fry of the Library Programs division of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement; and Judi Carpenter, the Project Officer for the National Center for Education Statistics.
The full report can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/frss/publications/95357/.

Because my topic is engaging early readers in the public library, I chose the preceding images to show how important children have been to the public library and what the public library can offer to children. Although the report is somewhat outdated, it gives an interesting picture of how many children and young adults went to the public library and what kind of programs and materials were offered to them in the early 1990s. I would really like to see this survey collected again with updated information. I suspect the continued progress of technology since the time of this report has had an impact on the number of children visiting the library and how frequently they do so, as well as on the number and types of programs being offered to children in public libraries currently.

I found these images by searching Google for research tables or figures on public library service to children. When I tried Google Images, I was getting too many extraneous results("noise"), so I switched back to the basic Google search page. In that way, I could read a bit more about the source of an image before choosing to use that site.

Image

This poster, from the Kids! @ your library campaign, is distributed by the Association of Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA).

I found this image by searching the ALA website, for kids or children and then sorting through for images. I figured that ALA would be a good source of related, professional images that were okay to share!
The Kids! @ your library campaign is an initiative to help local libraries bring more children in by reaching out to parents and caregivers. ALSC is providing tools and program ideas to participating libraries so that they can engage the children in their communities more effectively. Librarians can go to the ALSC website and download materials, then share the ways they are using them with others by providing feedback. This campaign seems to embody exactly the topic I am exploring, and this image it provides is thus very appropriate.

Database Searching

For the Database Searching competency, I began with a Building Block search of the ERIC database. I defined my search terms as follows.
S1 = (early reader or child* or you??)
S2 = (engage or interest or absorb or participat* or occupy)
S3 = (public or regional or branch) AND librar*

Search Strategy: S1 AND S2 AND S3
Results: 515 hits
Top 3 (sorted by relevance):
1. Spielberger, Julie, Carol Horton, Lisa Michels, and Robert Halpern. 2004. New on the shelf:
Teens in the library. Findings from the evaluation of public libraries as partners in youth
development, an initiative of the Wallace Foundation. Final report. Chicago: Chapin Hall
Center for Children, University of Chicago.
2. Zerby, Marilyn C. 1992. The use of children's library services by child care givers in the
Norweld service area. MLS Research Paper, Kent State University.
3. Fronius, Sandra K. 1993. Reading interests of young adults in Medina County, Ohio. MLS
Research Paper, Kent State University.

Because this search provided a number of hits that are not related to my search topic, and it found too many records to sort efficiently, I first tried adding (NOT teen) to my search, but that left 485 hits. So next, I used the Thesaurus to find preferred terms for my search. I ended up searching ((DE "Children" and DE "Childrens Literature") and (DE "Public Libraries")) and (DE "Library Services"), which gave me 21 hits. Sorted by relevance, the top 3 hits follow.
1. Gallivan, Marion VanOrsdale, and Washington, DC. ERIC Clearinghouse on Library and
Information Sciences. 1973. Research on Children's Services in Libraries. An Annotated
Bibliography.
2. Tretheway, Willeen, Madison. Div. of Library Services. Wisconsin State Dept. of Public
Instruction, and And Others. 1974. Kid Stuff-Again; A Catalog of Materials for Children's
Programs in Public Libraries.
3. Weir, Sandra, and Springfield, Illinois State Library. 1975. Administration of children's
services. Illinois Libraries 57, no. 1: 68 pp.

These actually look like pretty useful articles, and the number of results is manageable to sort. The Building Block search strategy seems effective, when used correctly with the database. Once I utilized the Thesaurus, I had more appropriate results than when I used natural language. If I was using a database without a Thesaurus, though, I would have to manage with a natural language search and hope that items were tagged better.


For the Specific Facet First search, I searched the Academic Search Complete (ASC) database. I chose public libraries as the most specific facet. I noticed after a first quick try that I would need to be sure to search in Subject, to exclude records just from the author name (i.e. Young) or journal title (anything with library or libraries). To check this, I tried the following searches. The first hit (when sorted by relevance) for each is listed directly below it.
S1 = (public or branch or regional) AND librar* = 12,587 hits
1. New York City libraries brace for massive cuts. 1991. American Libraries 22, no. 1: 6-7.
S2 = (engage or invite or occupy or engross or interest) = 20,635
1. Zytowski, Donald G. 1992. Three generations: The continuing evolution of Frederic Kuder's
interest inventories. Journal of Counseling & Development 71, no. 2: 245-248.
S3 = (early reader or child* or you??) = 353,768
1. Dale, Nan, Roman Danko, and Markhant Breen. 2001. Confronting adolescent bias and
intolerance through cross-cultural immersion: An American-Croatian collaboration." Child
Welfare 80, no. 5: 623-630.

None of the first few hits in any of the searches looked particularly promising. Clearly, I need to go back and work with one of the other search strategies or a different database. When I narrowed it down by searching all three facets, I got only 4 results, but none of them appeared to really touch on what I was looking for, and it was too few.


Next, I tried the Successive Fractions search, this time in LibLit. Note: I began with the search "All - SmartSearch," but got far too many results. I decided again to search by subject to retrieve more appropriate results. Since the early reader facet appeared the broadest based on last time, I decided to try that one to start with this time. I was proven wrong, with the following results - again with the first hit listed under each:
S1: early readers or children or youth - searched as (early reader or child* or you??) = 20,798 hits
1. Prater, Mary Anne and Tina Taylor Dyches. 2008. Teaching about disabilities through
children's literature. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.
S2: (engage or invite or absorb or engross or interest or participate) = 1,200 hits
1. Lenz, Connie and Helen Wohl. 2008. Does form follow function? Academic law libraries' organizational structures for collection development. Law Library Journal 100 no. 1: 59-116.
S3: (public or regional or branch) AND librar* = 24,458 hits
1. Brehm-Heeger, Paula. 2008. Serving urban teens. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.
S3 and S1 = 1,284 hits
1. Brehm-Heeger, Paula. 2008. Serving urban teens. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.
S3 and S1 and S2 = 3 hits
1. McKearney, Miranda. 2000. Deserved recognition well overdue. Public Library Journal
15, no. 4: 120-122.

The jump by adding S2 was great, and narrowed down my results too far. In fact, the three articles that came up all talked about the same reading program in Great Britain. I obviously need to look at my terminology to be more successful in my searching. I tried adding (or activit* or program) to S2, and I got 234 records. I noticed, though, that teens were coming up in the first few hits, so I added NOT (teen* or adult) (in All - SmartSearch again) to my search. I got 114 hits, which is at least more manageable. It still seems like this strategy with this database needs some more work, or is simply not the right choice for my topic.


Finally, I tried the Citation Pearl Growing search in Books in Print (BIP). I found the book Managing Children's Services in the Public Library, by Adele Fasick and Leslie Holt. I clicked on Bowker Subject CHILDREN'S LIBRARIES to try to find similar titles, which gave me 227 results. Sorted by date (default), the Fasick book was number 13. When I sorted by relevance, it was not even on the first page of 25. I was glad to find a few books that seemed even more appropriate to my topic, though, including the following:
Book Bridges: Story-Inspired Activities for Children Three Through Eight, by Terry J. Moore and Anita B. Hampton
Children Selecting Books in a Library, by Kara Reuter
Multimedia Approach to Children's Literature, edited by Mary Alice Hunt (published by ALA)
A Place for Children: Public Libraries as a Major Force in Children's Reading, edited by Judith Elkin
Read for the Fun of It: Active Programming with Books for Children, by Caroline Feller Bauer
Something Musical Happened at the Library: Adding Song and Dance to Children's Story Programs, by Rob Reid
The Storytime Handbook, by Deb Tuma-Church

Overall, I felt like this search in this database was productive, as it gave me a number of titles that sound very promising for my topic. I think I could get a lot of good ideas on how to engage young children in public libraries from these titles, among others on my result list.

Tagging

For this competency, I chose the resource Going Places with Youth Outreach: Smart Marketing Strategies for Your Library, by Angela B. Pfeil. The tag cloud from the Librarything page on the resource, found at http://www.librarything.com/work/2700096, looks like this:

Children's(1) children's services(1) librarians(1) libraries(2) Library marketing(1) library science(1) marketing(1) outreach(3) pbotw(1) ProCollection(1) professional(1) programming(1) programs(1) public relations(1) services(1) teen(1) youth(1) youth services(2)

I chose this title because it is a book for librarians and library administrators that provides guidance on marketing libraries to children. Since my topic is engaging early readers in public libraries, this book provides a great deal of information and strategy that relates closely. It includes sample outreach programs and further information on marketing, in addition to providing a clear guide, broken down into steps, on how to develop a thorough plan to market youth services.

RSS Feed

I added the RSS feed of the Kids & Families Calendar for Skokie Public Library. The calendar can be found here.
Although Skokie is not close to where I live now, I lived there for several years when I was little. I looked at a few other public libraries, and this one seemed like it had some great ideas for activities to do with kids & their families. In order to engage young children in public libraries, we need to have exciting and fun activities for both the children and their families to participate in. Hopefully some of the events scheduled on Skokie Public Library's calendar will help me get ideas for what I would do in a public library to bring kids in and get them involved.

Podcasts

This competency was more difficult to complete than the others. I had trouble finding podcasts that really seemed suited to the topic I have chosen, rather than just reviews of children's books. After some unsuccessful searches on other engines, I did find one finally by searching for 'library' on iTunes: the official ALSC Blog Podcast, which can be found at http://childrenslibrarian.libsyn.com/. I particularly enjoyed Episode 4, which talked about Podcasting and how to use it with children's programming in the library. [Note: Be sure you have a program, such as Apple's QuickTime, that will play .mp4 files before you use the above link.]

It led me to a great resource at the ALSC Website with lots of resources for librarians trying to bring children into their libraries: Kids! @ your library. Although I am not working as a librarian yet, I was very excited to find this website and get an idea of what we can do to bring children into libraries more and more.

The Association for Library Service to Children is a wonderful organization and resource for youth librarians. Its podcast was very appropriate to my topic of engaging early readers in public libraries, because it provides ideas and strategies on how to do so.