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I was so excited to see the issue of breaks in storytime being addressed over at Lisa's blog Libraryland. She and Mel are posting results and discussing implications from a recent survey on storytimes and workload.  I was as surprised as Lisa that almost a third of survey respondents didn't take breaks or weeks off in their annual storytime schedule.

I have often wondered what motivates people to raise storytimes (or let's face it, any program for kids, teens or adults) up to a no-break model. Is it:

• administration requiring 52 week schedules
• tradition - that's how it was when I came
• fear of losing participants
• service-to-the-community-above-and-beyond ethos 
• love those little munchkins and need my weekly fix (the mutual "I can't do without them; they can't do without me" syndrome)
• concern that patrons will complain 
• anxiety that patrons will leave and use another library
• or what?

I have seen alot of trepidation and tradition that keeps people from building in time for re-energizing, CE, conferences, service to other age groups,vacations, introduction of new types of early literacy programs etc. In order to keep up the pace, youth library staff take program preparation work home, only do storytimes as their program focus and often don't have the creative energy to develop their programs or services for other age groups or to serve the many families with preschoolers who cannot attend storytimes.

If storytimes are to entertain, than fear of losing the audience might be real. If storytimes are to model and help provide parents with the early lit support they need to be their child's first teacher, it seems that breaks are easily incorporated since parents have the tools that you provided to keep modeling awesome early lit work with their kids!

Once library staff start to take breaks, most see that their concerns were unfounded. Patrons do return. Time spent away from a routine helps create time to tackle other projects and plans that enhance services.

We are just off a ten week storytime hiatus (wait,  make that 13 weeks, I forgot we stopped mid December!). What happened? All but one storytime filled up when we re-started after the break. We had to add an additional storytime because of the demand. A poorly attended storytime that we morphed into a preschool "maker program (art and STEAM) filled up immediately (we could have added five more sessions based on demand). Staff and families came back refreshed, excited and happy.

What if YOU want to take breaks but your administration or co-workers are reluctant? 

1. Share the thinking (like Lisa's post above) going on in the library world about breaks - here and here are two examples.
2. Come to discussions prepared with a concrete plan for one thing you will use break time for (begin development of 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program; attend a conference or Roadtrip CE or have another staffer who covers desk while you are in storytime attend; develop a new type of tour or outreach; develop a program or series for an underserved age group or meet with school/daycare colleagues to start planning service partnership ideas).
3. Honestly discuss what the programming philosophy of the whole library is and look at comparisons between service to other age groups and other staff responsibilities in this area. Sometimes, coworkers or administration don't see the efforts that go into storytime (Storytime Underground's "Literacy is NOT a luxury") - once they come to understand what is happening, they can more easily see why breaks to re-charge, offer other types of programs and etc are necessary.

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Amy Koester of Show Me Librarian and I are tag-teaming at our blogs this week to report out the Chicago ALA Conversation Starter -Unprogramming: Recipes for School Age Success - that we led on Monday July 2 (see below for links to the whole series).  Please join our continuing conversation in the comments or on Twitter by using the hashtag #unprogramming. 

Amy and I were both so excited to have a chance to share the thoughts behind unprogramming at a national conference level. And we were uber pleased to have a SRO crowd of colleagues come to the program.

What's fun about unprogramming is that it really isn't new. Most of you are doing unprogramming already in big and little ways. We are simply pulling the threads together and encouraging everyone to try this more mellow approach and see real benefits. Just starting the conversation, so to speak.

The audience at our program joined the conversation and shared great ideas of how they have used the unprogramming concept in their programs.  Below are a few quick ideas people shared of programs they are doing:

Painting to Music - kids pull up music on YouTube and then paint while listening to it. Disfferent beats elicit different art responses. The art the kids create is then hung in the room.

Stamping - using Ed Emberley's books as inspiration, kids use stampers and stamp pads to create their own nique creations.

Bibliobop - combining books with music and dance

"Training Camps" - train kids to be a cowboy or pirate or logger or astronaut in these free-form programs that allow kids to pick up "skills" they need to become mighty.

Book Club - kids choose individual books to each read and then videotape interviews with each other booktalking their choice.

Guys Read Club - always done with a book component as well as a "smashing" component (water balloons off a roof; TV drop)

Plus Stuffed Animal Sleepovers, Teddy Bear Clinics, Messy Art Club!

Please share ideas for your unprograms in the comments or under the #unprogramming hashtag on twitter.

We storified the twitter feed for more audience reactions and ideas.  Amy will finish our series today with our slide deck.

Thanks for joining us so we could share the fun of this program from ALA in the blogosphere with all of you. And thanks to Amy for being the best presentation partner one could have!

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Worried about helping staff transition between over-planned programs and unprogramming? To create staff buy-in, encourage spending less time on preparation by connecting the budgetary dots: too much time spent prepping a stand-alone program isn’t financially worth it for the institution. 

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