What Happens When Storytime is Over?
This month we’re kicking off a series of posts on media mentorship, a term coined by Lisa Guernsey in 2014. We’re thrilled to have Claudia Haines and Cen Campbell, authors of the recently released Becoming a Media Mentor: A Guide for Working with Children and Families, share their expertise as librarians.
Have you been to your local public library lately?
Flickr: Multnomah County Library
On any given day, all across the country, something amazing happens. Herds of young children, caregivers in tow, tumble through the front doors of their local public libraries. In big cities and small villages, library storytimes are highly valued and hugely popular community programs. Storytime, like the public library itself, is iconic. Ask any adult about their relationship to their local library and many will begin with their own fond memories of storytime.
Storytime is both a powerful learning experience and the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the public library as a whole offers. In just minutes, a children’s librarian, a gaggle of young children from all walks of life, and their caregivers create a relationship built around literacy. Today, storytime has evolved into an interactive conversation. No longer are children shushed while the librarian reads a few classics. In fact, in some cases, storytime can be quite loud! For many families, storytime is a gateway into the world of early literacy. Librarians connect children with high quality and age-appropriate books, songs, and activities that feed the imagination, spark curiosity, and explore ideas.
But the relationship with families doesn’t stop when storytime is over.
Caregivers linger to look for books, puzzles, audiobooks, music, and magazines in the library’s curated collection. They socialize with other adults, sharing stories and advice in the library’s welcoming space. Children discover a favorite character, illustrator, author, or subject in book bins, at featured displays, or on the library’s computers and tablets. As they play with each other using puppets and toys the library intentionally makes available, librarians get to know their communities’ families. They’re able to recommend content that’s relevant, introduce something new, and even help families find something vaguely remembered. (“I’m looking for a picture book with a blue cover and a hat on it?”)
But did you know that beyond storytime, librarians are actively seeking out conversations about family media use, and can offer resources and expertise to families with questions about newer forms of media, too?
Librarians have long served the media needs of families, schools, and children, but it’s relatively recent that librarians have stepped up to incorporate brand new formats, engaging families in discussions about their media choices, and actively providing guidance and modeling for relationship-building media use, especially with younger children.
The launch of the iPad, and the devices that followed, have broadened librarians’ work instead of replacing it. Librarians have become media mentors, a role that is a natural fit.
Librarians are skilled evaluators and curators. We foster relationships with our community’s families, finding the resources they need in the formats they can use. We provide free programs that share new ideas, strategies, and information. Using the latest research and our professional experience, we support the varied literacy and media needs of families.
Children’s librarians serve as media mentors for kids, teens, and their families in three primary ways: media advisory, programming, and curated access. For example,
- Librarians at the Addison Public Library (IL) are recommending and teaching kids and teens how to use high-quality traditional and digital media in bilingual after-school homework programs.
- The Bozeman Public Library (MT) offers digital storytimes so families can see how digital media can support early learning and get recommendations from librarians they know.
- The Homer Public Library (AK) has a mounted iPad amongst the book stacks in the children’s section with a featured early literacy app reviewed and evaluated by the librarian.
Up until now it may not have occurred to you to go to your local library to talk to the librarian about children’s media, but we whole-heartedly invite you to do so. Whether it’s to ask a question about your own child’s media use, or to solicit recommendations for the best age-appropriate media to use in your head start center, ask a librarian!
Librarians are excellent community connectors, and they are often looking for partnership opportunities with other organizations who serve families with young children. You can read about more examples of the innovative work that librarians are doing in our book Becoming a Media Mentor: A Guide for Working with Children and Families.
What questions would you ask a librarian about apps and digital media use to support early learning? Let us know in the comments!
Claudia Haines leads storytimes, hosts Maker programs, and gets great media into the hands of kids and teens as the Youth Services Librarian and Media Mentor at the Homer Public Library (Alaska). She is a co-author of the Association for Library Service to Children’s white paper, Media Mentorship in Libraries Serving Youth (2015). She trains other librarians as media mentors and serves on both local and national committees that support families and literacy. She blogs at www.nevershushed.com. @claudiahaines
Cen Campbell is a children’s librarian, author and the founder at LittleeLit.com. She has driven a bookmobile, managed branch
libraries, developed innovative programs for babies, young children and teens, and now supports children’s librarians to serve as media mentors in their communities. She was named Library Journal Mover & Shaker in 2014 for her work on LittleeLit.com. She is
a co-author of the ALSC White Paper on Media Mentorship, Media
Mentorship in Libraries Serving Youth.
Understanding Digital Games and Family Life
Once a novelty restricted to arcades, video games have become a deeply embedded part of our lives. As digital game platforms have become increasingly more affordable and more accessible over the past forty years, it has become clear that games aren’t just fun to play, but can motivate people of all ages to learn more deeply and to improve productivity.
As part of our Families and Media Project, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center conducted a survey of nearly 700 parents whose 4-13-year old children play video games. While other past national surveys have explored specific facets of children’s or adults’ gameplay, our survey attempts to learn more about the role that video games play in family life and routines.
We are pleased to present this data as a series of infographics, each featuring a particular facet of video games and family life. Here, we share what parents have reported about the places children play video games, how often and how long they play during typical sessions, and the kinds of devices they are likely to use.
Stay tuned for more installments of this series over the next few months.
Learn more about the survey and the methodology here.
Developing Children’s Media with Diversity in Mind
Across the children’s media landscape, from movies to video games, diversity and inclusion have been hot topics for discussion throughout 2016. Much of the conversation has focused on the finished product, such as an app or toy and whether it does an effective job in reflecting the diversity of the world we live in.
Looking at the finished product is without a doubt important, but at Diversity in Apps (DIA), we are also nudging the conversation towards a focus on the teams of producers and creators responsible for all the decisions that go into the finished product. It is their decisions at key milestones that ultimately determine the diversity of the product.
When we put together the draft of the Diversity and Inclusive Growth (DIG) Toolkit, we thought it was critical for producers to have a tool to help them as they worked through the product development process. We identified twelve key high-level criteria, each of which require producers and designers to reflect on how to be inclusive and to value diversity throughout their production process:
| Hiring | Art Production |
| Audience | UI/UX |
| Internet Connectivity & Device Choices | Voiceover |
| Budgeting & Timeline | Music |
| Concept Design | User Testing & Focus Groups |
| Character Design | Marketing & Social Media |
Calling All Producers: Creating Media for Hispanic-Latino Families
The new document Aaron Morris put together to help producers create media for Hispanic-Latino families goes hand in hand with much of the criteria we identified in our toolkit. Aaron cites the importance of budgeting time to speak and test with your identified audience as well as the importance of providing UI/UX for navigation in both English and Spanish. These are just two examples from this very valuable document.
Over the past few months, DIA has been inviting people from all over the children’s media landscape—from CEOs to researchers—to speak on our podcast and share their work on diversity. Though varied, these conversations always have a common thread: The companies and organizations doing the best job with diversity and inclusion are those that have made it an organization-wide goal. That means diversity and inclusion are valued at each step in the product development process because of their importance not only to the bottom line, but also in creating a better product.
We are excited to have Aaron on the podcast this week to dive deeper into this tip sheet and share his thoughts on how producers can continue to strive for diversity and inclusion.
Kabir Seth is a writer and creator of digital apps for children, including the Ramayana app and Storied Myth. Kabir is also a founding member of Diversity in Apps, a grassroots organization created to raise awareness and engage in research about the need for inclusive, equitable, and diverse children’s media. Follow @diversityinapps and @kdawg2332 on Twitter.
