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A library’s space, and how it relates to children of all ages, is the theme of this year’s ALSC Charlemae Rollins President’s Program: Libraries: The Space to Be . If you are attending ALA Annual in Orlando, join President Andrew Medlar to learn more about space design during a panel discussion that will focus on best practices for small, medium and large libraries, and how libraries are creating spaces that are vital to children and the communities that support them. Speaking of space design – does your library have a space created specifically for the tween user?

Yes, tweens. Previously best known as “school age patrons”, the 9-12 year old set has graduated into their own sub-community of library users, with many libraries paying attention to this demographic by creating specialized spaces within their children’s departments that cater directly to the pre-teenage.  Today, libraries are defined as much by their spaces as they are by their communities.

So what makes tweens so unique?  For one thing, it is the age where many children are becoming aware of their own likes and dislikes, reading preferences, and identity. Tweens have opinions, and they voice them – through book selections, social media posts, and yes, their library usage or non-usage.  By creating a space that is unique to this narrow range of patrons, children’s librarians are sending an important message: Welcome. We want you here. Get comfortable. Stay for awhile and hang out.

Hard tables and straight backed chairs are being replaced with free-form tables on wheels, ones that can fit together like puzzle pieces, or be pulled apart to create separate spaces on those days when pre-teen patrons want their own personal space.  Wooden chairs are making way for softer counterparts, ones that beckon a child to sit and charge their phone while dangling their legs over the side. Tall bookshelves are being swapped out for lower, browsing units that mimic those seen in retail – with face out book covers and shelf talkers.

Gone too are the bulletin boards created solely by the library staff. Tweens today want interactive spaces that they can personalize and change as they please, often as rapidly as their tastes and trends fluctuate. Think art galleries, creative writing boards, and other collaborations.

Did I mention making? Tweens are at that fantastical, mystical age where you can plop play dough on the table in front of them, and they will squeal with delight as they roll out snakes and coils, reminiscing about their long ago childhood years. The very next day, those same tweens will be wielding tweezers and 3-D printed model hand parts as they build a working hand prosthetic, in the library. So many tween spaces now include mobile carts and other creative “creating stations” that focus on incorporating STEM and STEAM activities into drop in activities in the library that inspire curiosity on a whim – no signing up for a program weeks in advance here. In tween spaces, programs are often the spontaneous, drop in variety.

So take a look around – does your library have a space dedicated to tween users, one that they can call their own? Are you on the fence, trying to determine if this type of space is a want or a need in your community? If you are headed to ALA Annual in Orlando, please come by at 8:30 am on Saturday, June 26, as I discuss this very topic in the program: InBeTween – Programs and Services for Tweens in Public Libraries. You will also see a wide variety of tween spaces from around the country, in libraries small and large. If you have a tween space that you want to share, please reach out to me at [email protected]. I’d love some more examples of tweens using – and loving- their library spaces!

Lisa G. Kropp is the Assistant Director at the Lindenhurst Memorial Library in NY. She is the co-chair of ALSC’s Liaisons to National Organizations committee and the outgoing chair of the Managing Children’s Services Committee. Tweet hello to her @lisagkropp!

The post Tween Spaces – Wants or Needs? appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Over the past few years, there has been a growing awareness in public libraries that children within their service areas may not be getting enough to eat during the summer months when school breakfasts and lunches are unavailable. Many libraries have partnered with state and local organizations to address this “food insecurity” by offering summer food programs, but this may seem like a daunting enterprise for small, rural, and/or understaffed libraries.

Caroline County Public Library, one of eight rural Maryland libraries that my organization serves, began offering a summer food program last year. I decided to interview Amanda Courie, Youth Services Manager, to find out how this kind of program can work on a smaller scale.

Amanda, I understand that Caroline County Public Library is a small system. How many full time staff members are there? How many of them work in youth services?

“We are a small system!  We serve a county of about 33,000 people on Maryland’s rural Eastern Shore.  We operate a Central Library and two small branches.  There are 15 FT employees and 8 PT.  I am the only one who works full time in Youth Services.  I have one FT employee who is our Early Childhood Unit Manager; about 50% of her time is in Youth Services, and 50% is spent staffing the branches and the Information Desk.  Then there are three PT employees who contribute to Youth Services along with staffing our public service points.”

How does your summer food program work, and what made you decide to launch it?

“Our decision to launch the summer food program grew from a growing awareness nationwide and in our county of the number of families facing food insecurity. According to the MD Food System Map, produced by Johns Hopkins University, 40.2% of children in our county qualify for free lunch, and 11.1% of the total population is considered food insecure

We know that children rely on school meals throughout the school year, and that summertime is a big challenge for families who are food insecure.  Our local Parks and Recreation Department runs summer camps throughout the county for five weeks out of the summer, and these sites double as Summer Meals Sites.  Our concept was to help fill in the gaps not covered by this program, both for the other five weeks of summer vacation, and for the children who weren’t enrolled in the summer camps and couldn’t make it to those sites.

Looking at our resources, especially as far as having a small staff, we decided to serve an afternoon snack at our Central Library, Monday-Friday at 2PM, for 10 weeks in the summer.” 

Which organization(s) do you partner with to make this program possible? Has this program led to any new partnerships?

“We partner with our local school system, Caroline County Public Schools.  They make all of the registration and reimbursement arrangements with MSDE (Maryland State Department of Education), who in turn participates in the USDA’s Summer Food Service Program We received training from our school system’s food service program to ensure that we were following USDA guidelines.  They also prepared the menus for us, making sure that we were meeting the federal nutrition guidelines.  Once a week I picked up food and drinks from the food service workers at an elementary school about a mile from the library.  The school system handled all financial aspects of the program; there was no cost to the library and very little paperwork. 

We have partnered with our school system on many projects before, and we even share an ILS with them, so I can’t say that this program led to new partnerships.  But it certainly enriched the partnership we do have with them, and they were happy to assist us in our efforts to serve nutritious snacks to children over the summer.”

What have been the benefits and drawbacks of the program? Have there been any surprises?

“When we went into the program, we assumed that the biggest benefit would be that kids who otherwise wouldn’t have access to a healthy snack over the summer would be able to come to the library and get it.  That certainly has proven to be true.  However, the biggest surprise, and another big benefit, has been the enhanced connections that we have formed with the kids who eat snack daily.  In most cases, these are library “regulars” who spend a large part of their summer at the library.  In past years, inevitably they grow restless by early afternoon are were often asked to leave for the day due to behavior issues—being too loud; running; fighting with each other.  However, when we started serving snack every day, we noticed a drop in behavior issues.  Early on, we made a practice of sitting with the kids while they ate, chatting and getting to know them.  These connections proved to be invaluable in providing a positive library experience for them over the summer.  Now, whenever I’ve seen these kids in the library during the school year—even last fall—they ask if we are serving snack again this summer.

I will be honest about the drawbacks of the program.  Since we do partner with the USDA Summer Meals program, we must follow their very stringent guidelines on both what to serve and how to serve it.  There is no flexibility to offer kids a variety of choices, or to give hungrier kids “seconds”.  All participating children must receive one of each item offered to make a nutritionally complete snack.  If they don’t eat it, it can go on the “share table”, but after that if no one takes it by the end of snack time, it must be discarded.  While we understand these guidelines, it was still difficult to get used to this procedure.  However, we decided that partnering with this program was the only sensible way for us to serve safe, approved, subsidized snacks to children.”

Do you have any advice for libraries who are interested in starting summer food programs (especially other small and rural libraries)?

“I would encourage libraries, particularly small, rural libraries, to look into partnering with an agency who is familiar with USDA guidelines and enthusiastic about extending Summer Meals services to more sites.  I would also recommend planning to offer a summer food program that is realistic with the staffing levels available.  Summer is already an extremely busy time of year for library staff, so offer a program on scale with your resources.  Having said that, we have found that our summer meal program is extremely rewarding and helps fill the summertime gap for children in our community facing food insecurity.”

To find out more about offering a summer food program in your library, contact your local school system, or reach out to your statewide USDA School Meals liaison.

Rachael Stein is the Information Services Manager at Eastern Shore Regional Library in Salisbury, MD.

The post Food in the Library? An interview with Amanda Courie about Summer Food Programs appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Later this spring our library will be hosting its first ever Volunteer Fair.  We are so excited for this event as it brings value to the community as well as lays the foundation for new partnerships with many local organizations.

We considered a volunteer fair for our community for several reasons.  First, our library is fortunate to be located in a town that is dedicated to civic service and philanthropy.  This event is also a great way for us to target and engage two elusive age groups for us– tweens and teens.  Finally, a volunteer fair supports one of our library’s missions: to act as a responsive resource for lifelong learning.  We hope a successful fair will further strengthen the library’s position as a vital center of the community and create lasting partnerships with local organizations.

Finding and securing participants in the fair has been a great education in the breadth of service opportunities available.  If you’re interested in holding a Volunteer Fair, here are a few tips to get you started:

• Begin with existing partnerships. Does the library partner with any other local organizations for programming or outreach efforts?  Does your Friends group use volunteers?  Does your library display flyers or brochures from organizations that could use volunteers?
• Collaborate with colleagues. Are any coworkers actively volunteering?  Or do they have a connection to an organization in need?
• Look at which other organizations are present at community events. Farmer’s Markets and festivals are a great way to make contact and learn about other local organizations.
• Research national organizations that may have a local chapter nearby in need of volunteers. These can include: American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Red Cross, Alzheimer’s Foundation, National Multiple Sclerosis Society and many others.
• Perform an online search to see what opportunities are available in your area and contact those organizations directly about your event. Websites like volunteermatch.org and createthegood.org are a good place to start.  Also your community’s website may list opportunities.
• Enlisting participants may seem like a daunting task, but the mutual benefits of a volunteer fair encourage involvement and support.  The organization 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.

Sophia Kenney is a member of the ALSC Liaison with National Organizations committee and works for Glencoe Public Library.

The post Host a Volunteer Fair appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Digital citizenship. It’s a complex subject that I’ve thought a lot about in recent years- and one that I’ve been figuring out how best to address in my role as a public librarian. For our kids to be contributing participants in the Digital Age, they need to be informed about a whole host of issues such as internet safety, privacy and security, cyber bullying, digital footprints, information literacy, copyright and creative credit, and more!

So when Mariah Cheng, one of my regular patrons who also happens to be an elementary school teacher, approached me about teaching a series of digital citizenship workshops at the library for children and parents I jumped at the opportunity to partner with her. Mariah had recently become a Certified Educator through Common Sense Media’s Digital Citizenship Initiative which offers training and curriculum for free to K-12 educators so that they can teach their students and families how to be smart, safe and responsible online. 

During our planning stages I reached out to the Vice Principal of one of my local schools to see what topics she thought were most important for her students to learn and what ages would be best to target the classes towards. She and I had previously discussed how difficult it was for her teachers to find the time to address digital literacy with their students and how the library might be able to partner with the school to teach these topics. Unfortunately, whether she was overwhelmed with the start of a new school year or otherwise, I never heard back from her and moved forward with planning the classes along with Mariah and my Children’s Department staff.

Mariah and I decided to hold a series of three classes: one for parents, one for kindergarteners through 2^nd graders, and one for 3^rd through 5^th graders. We capped registration at 16 attendees for each class, the capacity of the library’s computer lab. Ultimately we ended up cancelling K-2 session due to low interest, and we expanded the 3^rd-5^th Grades session to include older students after many inquiries by parents. For the Parents session Mariah addressed how to help their children use social media responsibly, how to address cyber bullying, and how to talk to their kids about their online activities. I especially loved that Mariah’s lessons were pragmatic. It’s a fact of life that adolescents are online and using social media already. Instead of being alarmist or didactic Mariah gave parents the tools they need to set reasonable limits on their children’s screen time and to help their kids be safe and healthy while doing so. She introduced parents to a variety of tools they could use to limit or monitor computer time and gave them some great resources for evaluating websites, apps and other media. For the Student session, Mariah talked with kids about their online activities and what to do if you see or are the target of cyber bullying. She also talked about “digital footprints” and reminded participants that and nothing is truly “private” or “erasable” online. The kids wrapped up the session by playing Common Sense Media’s Digital Passport, a collection of free computer games that teach kids about respect, safety and community online.

Mariah Cheng teaches digital citizenship to a class of 4th -8th graders at the Monterey Park Bruggemeyer Library. Photo by Diana Garcia.

Students sorted unique and shared characteristics of bullying and cyber-bullying. Photo by Diana Garcia.

These programs were a great way to start the conversation about digital citizenship with kids and parents and we definitely plan to hold more to address subjects like information literacy, copyright and creative credit. I would encourage anyone who is interested in holding digital citizenship programs to take a look at the wealth of resources available from Common Sense Media’s Digital Citizenship Curriculum. There are ready made lesson plans, toolkits, online games and assessments, activities, videos and downloadable materials all free for librarians and teachers to use with students. There is even a list of Certified Educators on the website. You may have one working in your school or district already!

Have you offered digital literacy classes at your library? Did you work with local teachers or have you used Common Sense Media’s resources? Share your experiences and let’s continue the conversation in the comments below!

Diana Garcia is the Children’s Librarian at the Monterey Park Bruggemeyer Library in California where she has the privilege of serving a diverse community through storytimes, creative programming and tutoring. Her afterschool literacy program for English Language Learners won the PLA Innovations in Literacy award in 2013. Diana is currently serving on the ALSC Liaison to National Organizations Committee. She is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Children’s Literature Council of Southern California and serves on their Awards Committee. 

The post Taking the Lead in Helping Kids Become Good Digital Citizens appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Located in an urban area, my library has a large population of people experiencing homelessness. All of the schools in the area are Title 1 funded schools, which also indicates a high level of need for transitional housing and other services for families.   Although we regularly see homeless populations in the library, I wondered why we don’t see more and what we could do to make these potential patrons feel welcome and aware of not only our warm building in winter months but also our wealth of resources and programming for families.

I developed a loose plan to visit the shelters and homes that serve families, provide a storytime, talk about resources and distribute library cards. I honestly thought it would be a cinch to get the shelters on board. But I was setting myself up for difficulties. I had an elevator pitch that largely skipped why this might be a useful service. When it comes to populations that need food and shelter, the library may be pretty low on the priority list. Honing our elevator pitch to include the ‘why’ is especially important when developing new partnerships.

It was very difficult getting a hold of anyone at any of the handful of organizations I contacted.

I didn’t take it to heart and continued to call and leave messages.  What I neglected to do in those messages was to also offer myself up for whatever they might need.  Maybe they did not have the time or space for a storytime. Maybe parents really wanted information about our drop-in job hunting courses. Maybe they needed something else.   Instead of asking them what they need from the library, I unloaded my assumption of what I thought they needed.

After a few months of calls and email exchanges, one temporary housing organization said they did not have enough staff for my program and they were concerned about their populations’ privacy. That was eye opening because I had approached the partnership entirely from my perspective rather than theirs.   

Another transitional housing organization said yes and we were able to schedule visits.  Although it was wonderful to provide a storytime, I felt I had much more impact after the storytime when I talked casually with parents and children about the different things the library offers while distributing library cards.  In the end the partnership has been successful and we will continue to offer this service once a month at multiple homes.

What have you learned from difficult to cement partnerships?

Arwen Ungar is the Early Learning Librarian at the Vancouver Community Library in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.  She is passionate about puppies and early literacy, not necessarily in that order.  You can reach her at [email protected].

The post Partnering with Homeless Serving Organizations appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Recently I attended a meet-and-greet at one of our local public libraries. This library is located near one of our elementary schools. Along with my fellow district librarians, I’d been invited to the event as a kickoff to the new school year.

Although it was – and still is – a busy time for school librarians (book displays, helping teachers, moving shelves, getting virtual and physical spaces ready), I thought it was important to attend. Indeed, I was so very glad (and honored) that I did!

Along with the pastries (my favorite was the blueberry coffee cake) and coffee, there were enthusiastic introductions and reconnections. We met staff members, heard about recent summer programming, and upcoming kidlit author visits. (I’ve already put them on my calendar.) I was given an “I Love My Library” button. I think I’ll wear it every day!

(Image courtesy of the author)

A tour of the library’s children’s and teen areas came next.  I was pleased to hear so many great conversations coming from the shelves. There were talks about seasonal displays, Caldecott books, and genres. Also, I heard lots of “oohs” and “aahs” over tech gadgets, media spaces, and reading areas. Eager questions were followed by friendly answers, and ideas began brewing.  Also, there was laughter!

In the middle of the visit, while we were all discussing our love of reading, and books that were important to us as children, I realized some things I’d always known, but just never articulated. (1) When librarians connect, all patrons benefit. I know we walked away with many ideas, and I hope it was reciprocal! (2) We each serve our patrons (students) in many of the same ways, and each way matters.

Heading back to my own library to continue in beginning-of-the-year prep, I know I enjoyed this time very much because it connected me to librarianship again in a very lovely way.

I’m grateful to the Irving Public Library for the hospitality, and I hope we can one day return the favor. I also hope that we can connect more often. Blueberry coffee cake really isn’t required (although it would be nice).

Cynthia Alaniz is a school librarian at Cottonwood Creek Elementary in Coppell, Texas. She is a member of the ALSC Liaison with National Organizations Committee and a 2014 Morris Seminar participant.

The post Back to School Connections appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Have you ever wondered-“Where can I get help with a big initiative in my library? Who would be a partner that can stretch beyond our walls and bring more partners to the table?” We have found this partner with our local United Way. With a new focus at the national level, the United Way has changed. With dedication to providing good education, financial stability, and healthy and strong communities, local United Ways are reaching out to their communities more than ever. Our local United Way responded to a county wide assessment that pinpointed three areas that we as a community needed to focus on-Early Literacy, Mental Health, and Low-Income families. The library was a natural partner with early literacy. We now have a partnership with United Way of Medina County that is funding our R.O.C.K.S. Program (Reading Opportunities Create Kindergarten Success). Medina County R.O.C.K.S. is an interactive workshop for parents and their kindergarten-age children. Parents listen to informational speakers while the children enjoy interactive learning and then parents and children complete a reading readiness activity together. Families receive materials to take home to practice, books, and much more!
Our United Way also partnered with us on our One Book, One Community initiative. They came to the table with the idea to collect enough copies of the book Wonder to give to every sixth grader in our county. They did it and collected over 2500 copies of the book. This is where the United Way has been most effective as a partner for us, reaching businesses and making those connections that otherwise we could not. The executive director at the time told me that asking businesses to donate books to kids was their easiest project. It was easy to convince individuals and businesses to support reading, especially a book that has the message of being kind. Choosing this book was our library response to the health assessment that indicated that 17% of the youth in our county in 2012 had seriously considered suicide.
I encourage you to seek out your local United Way and sit down and talk about how you can partner together. It has been a beautiful relationship for both the United Way of Medina County and the Medina County District Library and because of the United Way, we have found new partnerships. Check out their website at www.unitedway.org.

Holly Camino is manager of the Buckeye Branch at the Medina County District Library in Medina, OH. She is serving on the 2016 Arbuthnot Lecture Committee, the ALSC Liaison to National Organizations Committee, 2014-2016, and a Member of the ALA Committee on Membership Meetings 2015-2017. Holly is also a 2013 recipient of the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times and American Library Association, “I Love My Librarian Award”.

The post United Way-Partnerships that create Partnerships appeared first on ALSC Blog.

My branch of the Geauga County Public Library has been lucky to have a long standing partnership with a local 4-H club. Our branch is the home to a vibrant genealogy reference department. Over the years library staff and 4-H clubbers have worked on family trees, family history projects, photography and scrapbooking.  The library staff shares expertise with the members and in turn the members help create local history displays in the library and plan library volunteer parties.

Don’t have a genealogy department? Here are some ways that other library youth services departments are partnering with local 4-H clubs:

• Small Pet Information day – club members brought in gerbils, rabbits, etc. in cages and spoke about how to care for pets (also a Chicken Day and a Rabbit Day!)
• Agricultural Literacy Day – club members read farm stories to young patrons, passed out gardening informational materials and introduced 4-H to young children
• A Pet Club judged one library’s pet show on the library lawn.

Live in a city? Don’t think 4-H works in your area? Many suburban communities also have 4-H clubs and here are some projects that work anywhere:

• A drama club performed short skits at Saturday Morning storyhour
• A rocket club demonstrated rocket design and showed how to make small “rockets” to shoot indoors.
• A food club set up a grill at the library summer concert series and sold hot dogs, pop, chips and homemade goodies. The proceeds were shared with the library.
• The 4-H organization offers hundreds of project choices. When you think of 4-H you may think of sheep and chickens, but these are also current 4-H projects: gardening, sewing, recycling, fishing, bicycling, robotics, and astronomy. The possibilities for partnership topics are huge.

Where do I start?

• Ask around your staff and patrons if anyone has a connection to 4-H.
• Call the local Cooperative Extension office in your county. In every state 4-H groups are organized by county and overseen by the Cooperative Extension Service headquartered at that state’s  land-grant university.  Here in Ohio it is Ohio State University, in Montana it is Montana State University, etc.

Have other 4-H partnerships that have worked at your library? Please add them in the comments!

–Judy Lasco, Geauga County Public Library, Ohio

Member of ALSC Liaison with National Organizations committee

The post Partnering with your local 4-H group appeared first on ALSC Blog.

As a result of my work with ALSC committee, Liaisons with National Orgs Serving Youth, I’d had high hopes that this year’s Dia Day celebrations would be well attended by Big Brothers Big Sisters “Bigs” and “Littles” across the country. I’d worked with my liaison at the org in the months and weeks leading up to Dia, our anticipation building, getting more and more excited as April wound slowly towards the end of the month.  I’d even anticipated writing a blog post for ALSC featuring happy photos of Bigs and Littles participating in joyful parties celebrating multicultural books.

Please note the absence of aforementioned photos in this blog post.

While it’s possible that some Bigs might have taken their Littles to a Dia Day event, it definitely didn’t happen on the scale I’d imagined possible.

Bummer.

So, why did I choose to write about the experience of working towards a partnership initiative that essentially flopped? Because I think it’s important for us to reflect when programs fail, when kids don’t show up, or when the perfect book you picked for storytime turns out to be a dud with the audience. Go ahead and be bummed out, but don’t dwell on it, and don’t let it discourage you from trying again. More importantly, try to figure out what went wrong, and what you might do differently in the future.

In trying to identify why this flopped, here’s what I came up with:

• I’d counted on most public libraries holding Dia Day events, and registering them with the Dia Day Event finder.  They didn’t.
• Dia Day events were scheduled for a variety of dates over a two-three week period, making it challenging to message (nationally) where/when events were scheduled (locally).

I definitely want to try again to get Bigs to take their Littles to Dia events in future years, and I think with some effort it’s possible that it can happen.

We spend a lot of time celebrating our successes – Let’s remember that we can celebrate our failures, too, as long as we learn from them!

What have you learned from programs or initiatives that didn’t go off quite as planned or expected? Did you revamp and try again? Please share in the comments!

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Sylvie Shaffer is the Middle and Upper School Librarian at Maret School in Washington DC. In addition to her work with ALSC’s Liaisons with National Organizations Serving Youth, she is also a member of DC area notable book selection committee Capitol Choices and has enjoyed serving in its 10-14 reading group since 2009.

Did you know that Head Start was founded back in 1965, with Early Head Start joining the ranks in 1994? Both agencies promote the school readiness of young children from low-income families through agencies in local communities, making Head Start a perfect partner for the ALSC Liaison with National Organizations committee, and libraries in general. Head Start also promotes and enourages the role of parents as their child’s first and most important teacher, just like libraries do.

For the last two summers, I have worked with my local Head Start agency, which has 21 centers in Suffolk County, NY, to help promote the summer reading programs in our local libraries. One easy thing to do? If your library is part of the CSLP, you can share some of the great information on family literacy that promotes parents and summer reading.

Photo rights maintain by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)

On a state level, the NYS Library maintains a website, Summer Reading at New York Libraries that offers tip sheets for parents and caregivers on the importance of reading aloud in multiple languages, and an early literacy manual to download for childcare providers. I made 21 copies of the manual to share with each Head Start center in Suffolk County; encouraging the Head Start staff to share information on local summer reading programs with their families before the end of the school year.  I also gave out any early literacy give-away item that I had purchased with our Family Literacy Services grant to both the public libraries and the Head Start sites. And, I have presented twice now at their yearly staff conference on topics such as “how to choose books for babies and toddlers” and “best books for early childhood.” The teachers and classroom aides really appreciated having a librarian come and share books that they can use in their classrooms.

A more extensive, and long term partnership has evolved over the last two years with our Head Start agency. They administered an early literacy pre-survey to families last summer for my office (I am the youth services coordinator for the Suffolk Cooperative Library System, with 54 member libraries). We provided the survey in both English and Spanish to over 1600 families, with over 900 being returned. Questions ranged from “I play with my baby or child every day” and “I know where my public library is in town” to “my baby or child participates in the summer reading program at our library.” It is our hope that we can administer a post-survey, asking the same questions, to returning families this September to see if we are creating change in early literacy knowledge and habits. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with any questions or comments about our local partnership with Head Start.

So help Head Start celebrate the 20th anniversary of its Early Head Start program this year by picking up the phone and making a call to your local site today. Because it’s never to early to start planning and building a partnership, one book and family at a time.

Lisa G. Kropp is the youth services coordinator of the Suffolk Cooperative Library System and a member of the ALSC Liaison with National Organizations committe and the Managing Children’s Services virtual committee. She also writes the First Steps column at School Library Journal.