Chat Room- Get With the Program, Part 2

In July, I wrote about why public libraries needed to offer their summer reading programs (SRPs) online . Kids could register for the program onsite or offsite—anywhere there is a computer—and participate even if they spend a chunk of the summer far away from their home library. However, the idea makes some librarians uncomfortable. Some feel SRPs and technology don't mix, and that giving kids the option of participating in the SRP online means that they won't come into the building.

Other librarians have moved past those anxieties, however, to experiment with wired SRPs, and have discovered that they work just fine. In some cases, the steps are tentative; in others, librarians have rushed right in.

On the September day I visited the incredibly busy Flushing branch of the Queens Borough (NY) Public Library, it was a school holiday, and the place was jammed with kids and parents from many countries, speaking many languages. Nancy Titolo, the branch's youth services supervisor, says the size of the immigrant population in Flushing means that a significant number of children spend much of the summer elsewhere. "When we announced our summer program," Titolo says, "I kept hearing, 'Can we join? We're going to India to visit our grandparents.'" She learned that wherever the kids were headed, e-mail was often available. "The answer was screamingly obvious," Titolo says. "E-mail participation."

The staff set up an account for the program on Hotmail, and whenever kids said they'd be going away, staff members gave them the address. Because no special publicity went into the 2001 program, only a small but faithful group of traveling kids participated, sending in the names of books they read, along with book reports and reviews. When the e-mail messages arrived from the readers, staff printed out the reports and filed them, and when the participants returned to Flushing Library, they received copies of the printouts and gave them to their teachers as evidence of how many books they had read. (In local elementary schools, students are required to read at least 25 books a year.) Titolo plans to revive and expand the e-mail program in 2002, and publicize it through the library's calendar of events, along with an address link, on the library Web site.

Phyllis Saunders and her staff at Arizona's Chandler Public Library run a year-round teen reading program online. Her Teen Matrix site (library.ci.chandler.az.us/Teenmatrix/teenmatrix.htm ) says simply, "Read and Win!" Middle- and high- schoolers can sign up at the site and submit an entry slip online (or on paper) for each hour of reading they do. After at least five hours of reading, they're eligible to win movie tickets donated by a local theater chain. The library notifies the winners by postcard, and the teens come in to pick up their tickets. "We're making the reading fun and convenient," says Saunders. She says the program has been successful because the staff makes it a priority to visit every junior high school to promote the program. So far, more than 700 teens have participated.

Saunders has considered an online program for younger children, too. But she's hesitant because, she says, "We have parents who feel uncomfortable with their kids online." Minnesota's Hennepin County Library (HCL), however, goes further than most libraries with its all-ages summer reading Web site. If you have ever thought about getting serious with an SRP site, look at HCL's Summer Fun 2001 interactive site (www.hennepin.lib.mn.us/kid/summer), which uses graphics by illustrator Lane Smith to lure kids into an inspiring selection of games and activities. The site offers: booklists, opportunities for kids to write book reviews and rate books, and contests with prizes. Smith answered questions, sent in by participants, online. But I'm particularly taken by how kids could sign up to keep their reading record online—a harbinger of what every library will probably be doing one day. Only 81 kids kept online reading records this past summer, but Marilyn Turner, manager of HCL's "eLibrary" and the SRP site, feels that was because the program was an experiment and staff kept publicity to a minimum. "Next summer," she says, "we'll really publicize it."

Automated SRPs let kids in our scattered society establish links to their libraries, and allow libraries to give them the encouragement they need. And when I asked the librarians in Flushing, Chandler, and Hennepin County whether they had seen fewer kids in the building, all said without hesitation that they'd seen more kids than ever.