Summer stories.

It's the time of year for this youth services consultant to wade through member libraries' summer reading program statistics and compile them for the state.

Honestly, though? The numbers don't mean much to me. They might tell me about how many kids each library usually sees at a program or how successful they are at registering kids for summer reading (and they're certainly useful to New York state), but they don't tell me about the experience the kids - or the staff - had.*

Summer reading at Oswego School District Public Library.

I want to hear about actual children and their positive learning experiences through summer reading programs. I want to hear about what worked and what didn't, and most of all, I want to hear about what libraries are planning for next year so that I can better support them.

So, this year I decided to add a page to our system's final report for short answers to questions about the experiences the libraries had with summer reading. And when I say I added questions, I mean I unabashedly lifted adapted them from another system's report. (Thanks, Lorie from Southern Tier!)

Not everyone responded, but among those who did, there were some common answers:

'Reading for pleasure and understanding.' Got a story in which children and teens in your program expressed this?
  
*At the end of every program, our display shelves were empty.

*After almost every program in which we did experiments, the children expressed an interest in reading the [related] books we recommended.

Tailoring your displays to your programming (or to the summer theme in general) is a great way to keep the kids excited about what they just experienced and also to highlight parts of your collection that might not get the same kind of action throughout the school year.

Summer 2014 was memorable for our library because...

*The theme was fun & engaging  / kids loved doing experiments and hands-on learning

*Attendance was high / we had so much participation that we ran out of reading logs

For as apprehensive as many libraries in our system were about the science theme, feedback on final evaluations was overwhelmingly positive. Some even attributed their increased attendance to the appeal of fun experiments and plan to continue programs that incorporate hands-on learning throughout the year.

For Summer 2015, I'd like to...

*Increase teen involvement 

*Do more publicity / marketing / partnerships

*Invite local heroes from the community (firefighters, soldiers, etc.) 

Everyone's looking for that elusive teen audience. Definitely something for me to address at our next summer reading workshop!

*But do I want libraries to register their kids for summer reading? YES, YES, AND MORE YES. If libraries don't register their kids, they have no number to give me, which means I have no number to give the state, which means that the report I am submitting is not reflective of the work our libraries are doing. This hurts my heart. I want them to know!