Increasingly, children’s librarians are serving the whole family, not just the child. The new focus on infants and toddlers may have been the impetus.
Obviously, babies don’t come to libraries by themselves and don’t leave their caregivers for the story hour. They need an adult lap to sit in.
Many parents do not have the information or the skills to share books, stories, and language activities with their very young children. As scientific evidence of the importance of early stimulation to children’s subsequent cog- nitive development became common knowledge, libraries realized that they had an obligation to help parents in their critical role as their child’s first read- ing teacher. The baby and toddler story time became an opportunity to model these skills for parents.
Many literacy coordinators in public libraries discovered that a primary motivation for many adults who enrolled in literacy programs was the desire to read to their children. They responded with family literacy programs that
use children’s books to teach parents how to read and family story times to model techniques for sharing books with children.
Sue McLeaf Nespecca reports that the best of these family literacy pro- grams acknowledge the strengths, styles, and needs of individual families (1994, 10). Adults with poor literacy skills may feel uncomfortable in the library at first. They may worry about failing or being stigmatized. They may have different expectations about reading and books than more educated par- ents have. Many of the public library’s services have evolved to suit the middle- class, educated people who are the institution’s primary users. Librarians them- selves are middle-class, educated people. It sometimes takes a leap of great empathy and resourcefulness to develop services that work for other groups.
Libraries for the Future, a national library advocacy organization, has joined forces with the Middle Country Public Library (N.Y.) and several fun- ders to create a Family Place in library demonstration sites throughout the country. The intention is for the library to take the lead in promoting emer- gent literacy and healthy child development by supporting the efforts of par- ents. These libraries have thought about the physical facility and tried to make it family friendly. There are spaces to park strollers and comfortable chairs where parents and children can cuddle together with a good book.
These libraries also conduct five-week parent-child workshops that combine library orientation, parent education, early intervention screening, parent support groups, and toddler play groups. The librarians collaborate with other agencies to provide information on topics such as nutrition or child develop- ment. Where needed, a bilingual librarian greets parents in Spanish (Feinberg and Rogoff 1998).
Another parent education program begun with outside funding is Read to Me L.A., a project of the Los Angeles Public Library. The major sponsor is GTE, a telecommunications firm, but it has additional support from the Riordan Foundation, the Los Angeles Times, the Ahmanson Foundation, Macy’s West, and Rotary International District 5280. I list the sponsors because they are indicative of the trend away from reliance on local govern- ment budgets for innovative library programs. In Read to Me L.A., a project consultant or specialist from the children’s services office trains volunteers who then give workshops to groups of parents on how and why to read to their preschool children. The training materials and the workshops are offered in Spanish and English.
I noted earlier in this chapter that some public libraries have also taken responsibility for teaching parents about the new digital technologies that are
available for them and their children. Many adults have heard only the horror stories circulated in the media about Internet predators and pornographers. At the same time, they are eager for their children to reap the educational bene- fits of the Internet. The library’s parent education efforts can be as modest as providing copies of The Parents’ Guide to Cyberspace, an ALA publication, or as ambitious as holding a series of classes. By equipping parents with bal- anced, accurate information about the Internet, libraries do a great deal to establish themselves as credible and caring institutions.
What all of these emerging trends have in common is an expansion of the library’s traditional function as a passive information provider to a more active educational role. Traditionally, public libraries have seen themselves as supplementing the work of schools in a fairly passive way, usually through the provision of books and information. Through these new initiatives, chil- dren’s librarians in public libraries are taking a leadership role in some aspects of early childhood education and technology training. They have shown that they can be useful partners to parents who educate their children at home and to children who need homework assistance that their schools cannot provide.
The public has responded favorably.
THE LAST DECADE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY was an ambiguous period in the chronicle of library services.
Although the library profession, like other segments of society, was given to millennial reflection, it was often difficult for us to read the indicators and interpret their meanings. On the one hand, some social critics claimed that digital technologies would mean the end of libraries as we know them. On the other hand, many libraries were experiencing a renaissance of public support, as evidenced by bigger budgets and the building of lavish new central libraries across the country. Librarians were struggling to redefine their roles in the dot.com landscape. The more thoughtful among us admitted that our profession would continue to be faced with unprecedented opportunities and perplexing challenges.
We could go on as we have in the past. We have had an evolutionary history, adding slowly to our traditional services as new needs, opportunities, or resources presented themselves. But we haven’t taken the time as a pro- fession—or as individual practitioners—to rethink what libraries could do best for children growing up in the twenty-first century. This would be an excel- lent time for children’s librarians to come forward with a coherent vision of library service for children, based on our core values and knowledge of chil- dren, society, and librarianship.
I suggest that we build our vision of future libraries for future kids as our foremothers did, those legendary women who designed public library services for children a hundred years ago. They started with a firmly held concept of
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