Chat Room: Summer Reading Season

Some Public Librarians are afraid of using the Web to promote summer reading programs. But remember, the main objective is getting kids to read no matter where the inspiration comes from. The formula for a successful summer reading site is pretty simple. If you want to encourage these online programs, you need to do two things: give kids what they want, and then publicize the heck out it.

We can learn a lot from libraries that are continually fine-tuning their summer reading Web sites. The Hennepin County Library (HCL) in suburban Minneapolis is an example of a good, attractive site that needs to step up its publicity and create more incentives to get kids to join. When HCL launched its online summer reading program last year, only 81 kids signed up. The low numbers didn't trouble Marilyn Turner, the library's Web site manager, who explained that it was more of a test site to see if it was worth doing again. She and the youth services staff determined it was.

So this year, HCL decided to step up its publicity campaign a bit, but they should have done more. When Turner's department redesigned the library's KidSite (www.hclib.org/kid) this spring, they transformed one-third of its homepage into a changing "advertisement" that serves as the summer reading program's homepage, with announcements of upcoming programs in the library's branches. "[The new site] has a more flexible design so that the kids see the summer reading info immediately," Turner says. Flyers advertising the Web address are also distributed to local schools. But Turner acknowledges that more publicity is needed, especially in schools. In the first three weeks of this summer, only 110 kids signed up—more than last year, but not enough.

HCL's summer reading program is different from most. Unlike many programs nationwide, HCL doesn't offer incentives to encourage kids to read—except for a relatively small number of giveaway books. And the system doesn't even keep statistics on how many kids and teens actually participate over the summer. It only asks kids to keep track online of what they read.

To evaluate whether Hennepin's summer reading site was making a difference with kids, Turner posted an online survey at the end of last summer. About 150 kids replied. "We had set up a page with a lot of authors' sites we thought were very cool," she says, "but the kids couldn't care less about them." What did they want? More games.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) understands the importance of knowing one's audience. The library has a conventional reading game on its summer reading site (summerreading.nypl.org) and a few book-oriented games, but its "Splish Splash Read" site, for good or ill, targets the kind of kids who like author sites. The reading lists, with one-line annotations in the typical style of the library's booklists, give readers a chance to review and rate books. The most attention-grabbing parts of the Web site are the live online chats with authors Sharon Flake, Chris Crutcher, Chistopher Paul Curtis, and Sharon Creech, scheduled for four times during the summer. (See "Your Chance to Chat With Authors," July 2002, p. 23). E-cards with the "Splish Splash Read" logo that kids can e-mail to their friends and the great artwork reflect the library's multicultural audience.

At a time when NYPL's budget was tenuous, Margaret Tice, the library's coordinator of children's services, succeeded in getting an $18,000 Library Services and Technology Act grant to pay for the original artwork and games, as well as the expenses associated with the author chats. With grant funds in hand, Tice and Catherine Jones, who manages NYPL's sites for kids, pondered how to get the word out about the site and the summer reading program in general (about 22,000 kids are members of the program, 15,000 of which are teens). An opportunity arose when Grow Network, a company that creates grade and test-score reports for all of New York's public school children, agreed to include the Splish Splash Read program and the summer reading Web site in its June mailings to parents. The reminder also included several recommended books from the library's booklists, matched by grade level. Every parent with kids in public school received it. Now that's publicity.