Chat Room-Get With the Program

Throughout my career, I've been involved in plenty of summer reading programs (SRPs). And for a long time, I've been kicking around an idea. Why not automate SRPs? Why not put them online and let PCs do the drudge work of registration and recordkeeping?

Given the current insistence on quantitative data (i.e., statistics) in libraries, most youth librarians I know spend hours around Labor Day slaving over a warm Excel or Access database, piling up the numbers like flapjacks for their library directors. Here's my proposal to make things easier:

We youth librarians need to gang up on a vendor like epixtech or CARL--someone who is an expert at putting interfaces on circulation modules--and convince them to create an SRP module that will run alongside the circulation system. Young people with library cards would go to a library catalog terminal, click on the SRP logo, and, with or without the help of an adult, swipe or type in their library card numbers: they would be instantly registered for the summer. (Kids who don't have library cards could enter their names into a Web form, although I think all kids should be encouraged to get cards.) While paper reading records would still be available, the library staff would encourage registered kids and teens to log in to the SRP site, either from home or at the library. SRP members would type or click in the number of books, or minutes, or hours, or pages, as they read. (This is my unsubtle way of saying that the interface would be customizable, and different libraries would insert graphics and rules as desired.)

Why is this idea worth considering? Partly because of current lifestyles. Plenty of kids join SRPs at the beginning of the summer, but in many libraries, that number drops drastically through July and into August, because so many modern kids spend big chunks of the summer at their non-custodial parent's, or at their grandparents', or at a tennis camp in the Orkney Islands. Many of these remote destinations have Web access, though, and kids enrolled in an SRP could continue reading, logging in, and participating all summer long.

The statistics entered online by the young people and the adults who care for them will compile themselves. The SRP module, of course, must be designed to configure the data librarians or directors want, such as number of hours read, or a breakdown of kids participating by age group, by ZIP code, or by library location. Staff or volunteers can manually enter data from paper records.

When I took my proposal to PUBYAC, the online discussion group for children's and YA librarians, I received many comments. Chance Hunt, Seattle Public Library's children's services coordinator, likes the idea and asks, "Why not have kids sign up for your reading program from around the world, whether or not they are your neighborhood kids?" But he also wonders, "Librarians around here already bemoan the fact that they don't have enough time to talk to kids about the books they are reading during the summer--will a fully automated summer reading program only distance the librarian and child further?" Likewise, Sue Ridnour, Flower Mound (TX) Public Library's youth services manager, says, "My biggest concern is having a computer substitute for human interaction, which we seem to be doing more... with kids these days." To which I say: if we set it up right, we'll have more time to talk with kids, and more kids (in person and remotely) to talk with.

For smaller libraries, it seems that an unavoidable obstacle to an automated SRP is a dearth of PCs in the children's area. Jane Acheson, a children's librarian at Norwell (MA) Public Library, says, "We at Norwell have one--yes, just one--PC for public use in the children's room.... It would be an unutterable burden to try to manage sign-up on the one computer, even if we could divert the computer-literate parents to doing it online from home."

Well, I never said it would be easy. But I propose that we should consider leaving the SRP grunt work to software by, say, 2005, just as most of us haven't filed or pulled catalog cards since 1985. Wouldn't it be nice for kids to stay linked to the library all summer, wherever they are, and for librarians to have time to reach out and work with them?