RA Programming for Kids
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Looking for amazing passive programming ideas for kids? Join NoveList’s Juvenile Content Specialist Autumn Winters and marketing expert Nancy Dowd for this free webinar. Discover new strategies for marketing your collection (and upping your programming stats) with this webinar about making great-looking, engaging passive programming materials that your kids will adore. Presentation: https://youtu.be/4rOCkf6CTac
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RA Programming for Kids
- 1. Readers’ Advisory Programming for Kids in
- 2. Autumn Winters, Editor/Bibliographer Kathleen Moore, Graphic Designer Nancy Dowd, LibraryAware Lead RA Programming for Kids Be part of the conversation on social media #RA4Kids
- 3. What Can Happen Here Today?
- 4. Self-Directed Strategies Many customers are choosing to bypass traditional service desks Photo credit: NYPL, Flickr
- 5. Community Building Photo credit: NYPL, Flickr Build connections between library staff and customers.
- 6. Resource Advisory Empower your patrons to find resources that suit their interests Photo credit: NYPL, Flickr
- 7. Serendipity Photo credit: NYPL, Flickr What did these kids find that will change them?
- 11. I Thought You’d Never Ask! Photo credit: Hash Milhan, Flickr
- 12. You Choose Photo credit: Daniel Lee, Flickr
- 13. Write Here Photo credit: Abbey Hendrickson, Flickr
- 15. Photo credit: Adunt, Flickr Playing Around With Readers’ Advisory
- 16. Readers’ Advisory For and By Youth Photo credit: See-Ming Lee, Flickr
- 17. When I Was a Kid Book Display Photo credit: John Morgan, Flickr
- 18. Found Objects Displays Photo credit: Laughing and Losing it
- 19. Photo credit: Dean Hochman Flickr Post-It Book Reviews
- 22. Photo credit: Vaguely Artistic, Flickr Photo credit: Vaguely Artistic, Flickr Inspiration Stars
- 23. Photo credit: Creative Jewish Mom Origami
- 24. Photo credit: Red Ted Art Cootie Catchers
- 25. Lafayette
- 26. Photo credit: Vaguely Artistic, Flickr Image credit: chplnj Book Face
- 27. Stacks Game
- 28. Game On!
- 29. The Map
- 30. The List
- 31. The Answers
- 32. What Works for You?
- 33. Questions? Be part of the conversation on social media #RA4Kids
Editor's Notes
- Autumn and Kathleen Intro by Nancy
- The library space is inherently full of possibilities. We’re going to talk about some ways to harness that sense of possibility. You can use it to build relationships, to increase engagement and to increase customer satisfaction. These are all the kinds of things you hear about in strategic plans all the time. But we’re going to come at it sidewise through play, serendipity and games.
- Here you see the glory days of the reference desk – clearly, those poor folks can’t get anywhere in that gorgeous, enormous card catalog without going through a librarian! Those were the days! Well, these days, we are hearing more and more from librarians who are struggling to form relationships with their customers, as library-services become more automated. It’s hard to form relationships with the folks who only ever place holds on their phones and use the self-check machine to pick them up. And those folks are getting a skewed perception of the value of the library – they see the value of the stuff, but not the value of the staff. As professionals, we believe that there’s more to the library than the materials. How do we create opportunities for connection between staff and customer in this kind of environment? One answer is to really up your game in terms of self-directed strategies, including passive programming.
- Rather than waiting for customers to approach you so that you can really drop some science on them with your impressive expertise, passive programming creates opportunities for LOW STAKES, POSITIVE, ENGAGING interactions, just like the one these girls are having with their librarian.
- Of course, the ultimate goal of youth librarianship is to lead your customers to the library resources that will make a difference in their lives – anything from books relevant to their interests to programming that will help them find community to mentoring relationships with librarians that will empower them to become caring, connected and successful adults. Just like Joe here from the School of Aviation Trades who was no doubt pleasantly surprised to find all these cool airplane books on the shelves. KM: how many of you have a similar modern scene to this at your library? -When I was working with teens, we’d regularly get groups exciting and talking about whatever the topic was – Twilight, world records, all sorts of different topics.
- Overall, passive programming is a gentle approach that allows you to interact with your kids in a relaxed and creative way. If a regular teen program is like 'throwing a party', passive programming is more like 'planting a seed'. You are trying to make them feel comfortable – with you, with the space and with their library community. KM: and one of the great things about passive programming is that once you find what works/what kids are interested in, you can grow/expand it into some more traditional programs/outreach.
- The nature of passive programming is to save time, or rather, to create meaningful time. You don’t have to do a lot of prep work and hope people will show up. You do very little prep work and let people engage when they will. It’s all about going with the flow – similar to the newly popular notion of ‘unprogramming’. That little bit of instability creates a lot of possibility. Great when youth in your community are too busy and distracted to make an effort to come to the library at a certain time Great when you want to show a certain group that you see them and value them, but neither one of you have a ton of time or space to devote one another. Anime kids, skaters, Minecraft experts. That little “I See You” is really the key to a lot of the things I’m going to talk about today. Great when you need to engage a crowd of kids on a regular basis – KM???
- The other beautiful thing about passive programming? It’s very cheap! Uses materials and space at hand – office equipment, paper, the library space itself, the creativity of your staff and volunteers. You are just adding an element of surprise. Think of it like a Google doodle – something interesting and unexpected that's a little bit interactive.
- Three simple tools to make your teen space more interactive. In fact, these tricks work even if you don’t have much of a dedicated teen space. What you are creating is a Mental Space. By the way, these all work on that principle of “I See You”.
- The suggestion box with public answers creates an informal space where people can speak freely. It shows that you value openness, transparency and honesty in communication -- creating that atmosphere of respect and trust that really lays the groundwork for successful youth services. Answer common RA questions for once and for all. Can be very revealing about what people didn't understand about library policies or procedures -- placing holds or requesting materials. Hard questions can be discussed here in confidence Responding to suggestion box questions in public is a simple way to demonstrate your advocacy to the audience you are advocating for. You can fight for them behind closed doors all day and night -- they will see SOME of the results from those battles. But it never hurts to directly reiterate the fact that your work is in service of youth. Also, a good place for kids to leave jokes and disrespectful comments, which are often hilarious. KM: do any of you utilize suggestion boxes? What works for your library?
- On a more lighthearted note, there's the public vote -- 'vote on the new teen space paint' is a popular suggestion in youth services literature -- what if there is no teen space paint forthcoming? Take it down a notch and ask a simple, seemingly inconsequential question: Nacho Cheese or Cool Ranch? Divergent or Hunger Games? You just need a set of counters and 2 containers to hold them/display the opposing factors. I used clear glass milk bottles and a roll of tickets. Recently, I saw a Mason jar lid with a precut slit in it that would be JUST THE THING, if you want to go all Pinterest about it. Change the question frequently. Let users know who won last week. Use this as a lens into the minds of your customers -- you can focus as broadly or narrowly as you like. This kind of vote is a wonderful way to encourage them to tell you that they are sick to death of something in pop culture, btw. That’s how I found out Lady Gaga was finished! KM: you can extend your answers into programming and book displays. If you find out they love XX topic, pull out some CDs from the collection. Or pull together a sherlock book display. Have them pick the next title for your movie night or game day.
- Again, not rocket science, but I would recommend including some kind of moderated place for kids to leave cryptic notes and memes in your teen space. If you don't, they'll end up in the suggestion box and on the walls and tables anyway. This kind of graffiti can be an invaluable window into your kids' interests and identities. You give them a chance to post communication that has no particular intended audience; communication that can be interpreted by all sorts of audiences who may or may not understand what's going on. These kinds of inside jokes, memes and doodles make up authentic youth culture and help you and your youth services space stay relevant. For example, I had a regular who would never mention to me or any other caring adult that she loves the rap group Odd Future, but I figured it out b/c SOMEBODY was writing Wolf Gang on the chalkboard all the time. So, I casually wrote on the board that Tyler the Creator's CD was part of the library collection and here's how to place a hold on it. I would call that a nonconfrontational success! In my quiet library, I used a kid's chalkboard and chalk. In Kathleen's super-busy library, chalk was absolutely forbidden lest the kids take it outside and write on the brick walls. Use what works for you. Probably not Sharpies.
- Saint Paul, Minnesota Do any of you ask public questions/prompts like this?
- The three simple tools we’ve been talking about all share a few common aspects – they are playful Our next few ideas are going to be centered in the philosophy of gamification and play. The value of play We have always paid a lot of attention to the value of play in libraries for our very youngest customers. It's pretty standard to have a train table, blocks or those nice, fancy manipulatives on the ends of the shelves for our preschoolers. At the very least, puzzles and coloring sheets. The next step is to really pay attention to providing a similar sense of discovery and play in the library for school-age kids and teens. Gamification = the incentivizing of certain behaviors through play. For example, the summer reading program. It’s something we’ve all been doing in youth services for a long time, but now we have a word for it. KM: play was huge at my library for teens and tweens! if you are dealing with a horde of kids every day, this is a way to quantify your interactions beyond what can be marked as a 'reference question, reader's advisory or directional' on the everyday stats sheet. It’s a way to have a low-stakes, empowering success inside the library. Gamification is also really good at increasing the sense of surprise and discovery inside a public space, which in turn, increases a customer's level of engagement.
- Get teen volunteers or regulars to design a book display for you based on their own expertise. How about "When I Was a Kid?" -- they can pull childhood favorites either for display in the childrens' or the YA area. Teens love to reminisce about their long-ago childhood favorites. Kathleen here talking about her experience getting teens to do book displays
- Found objects displays
- Post-it Recs. Provide post-it notes for kids to attach to their favorite titles. Encourage them to 'tag' the books with short and punchy recommendation language like "So Sad" or "All the Feels" or "Can't Wait for the Sequel" etc. To make this really simple even for the writing-averse, go ahead and have some suggested language in your display. That way, the meat of it is applying the tags to the books. In reader’s advisory terms, you are sneakily teaching them to reflect on their reading experiences and giving them some appeal language to help them talk about their experiences. KM: Summer reading reviews Gay character in a book – discrete recommendations Have any of you had luck with post-it reviews?
- Dothan, Alabama
- Dothan Book Spine Poetry
- Alongside coloring, origami is a great way to engage your kinesthetic learners. For example, origami Stars. Provide strips of paper and instructions on how to make origami wishing stars. Ask kids to write quotes from or titles of their favorite books and fold them into stars. Collect these and hand them out as needed, or leave them in the basket to come and go at will. Kathleen’s origami experience and ideas.
- Kathleen’s origami experience and ideas. Non-fiction books. Printable. Japan, other topics of interest. Football
- Cootie Catchers Use them for RA or book selection KM: Have any of your tried RA like this? We’d love to hear about a library actually doing this!
- KM: Lafayette
- Book Face
- Now that we work at NoveList, we were really interested in combining reader’s advisory, lists and games. How do you turn a list into a game? Turns out, it’s a really fun and adaptable activity. KM: think of this as an adaptation of a scavenger hunt!
- Our idea was to create a scavenger hunt based on a list of books – not one with clues, necessarily and not one that has to be completed in particular order. Just a simple set of shelftalkers and a map function as a simple discovery engine. We made an example based on Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the most popular book in America in 2014.
- KM: premise of the scavenger hunt Ask kids to fill in titles of the recommended books that they find on this map and return to the desk when they are finished. We are asking for 8 titles total. KM explains any design parameters.
- NoveList’s Recommended Reads lists are great sources of content for this game – Our If You Like Diary of a Wimpy Kid list has 25 titles on it and I’m updating it all the time. We also have lists related to different fandoms and book-to-movie adaptations.
- KM Place the shelftalkers in the spots on your shelves where the books are located (or where they would be located, if they are checked out). We included a Wimpy Kid book jacket on the piece to indicate WHICH shelftalkers are relevant to THIS game (so you don’t have to worry about removing your normal, everyday shelftalkers). The title and pre-written annotation will give kids an idea about the book, even if it’s not on the shelf. We included language about holds to try to assuage any frustration kids will feel if the books are checked out. The jackets, text and image can all be swapped out to fit any theme you can come up with.
- Additional types of reading maps What kind of passive programming and games have you tried in your library? How did it go?
- Autumn and Kathleen Intro by Nancy