Summer Reading: What's Next?

​This year’s CSD Youth Services Summit provided much needed collaboration and motivation!  Greta Berquist, our SLO Youth Services Consultant for Oregon library workers, lead the Summer Reading: What’s Next for Summer workshop.  Greta began the workshop with Judy Brown’s poem called Fire.  Take a moment to read an excerpt:

For the complete poem, click here.

The poem enabled workshop participants to take some much needed time to reflect on our previous past two years of summer reading endeavors.  Greta asked, "What will we keep for upcoming summer reading programming, and what will we stop?"   The workshop gave participants the space to not only reflect, but to problem solve and most importantly to be reminded of our why for summer reading:

• Every kid in our community can access reading materials they enjoy.
• Every family member feels like the library matters to them and that they matter to the library.

Youth services staff were up against many challenges during the pandemic. We consistently tried to provide the best summer reading experience to our youth patrons and their families.  Much of what we provided was successful.  However, there were still challenges.  During our workshop we had time to reflect and evaluate what worked well for summer reading and what did not. Some examples of the many challenges included:

• My teens don’t have transportation to the library
• We have a lot of new parents and babies in our neighborhood.  We don’t see them accessing our services. 
• The nonprofit down the street wants to combine forces to support families next summer. I have no idea what to do.
• Some of our families don’t see themselves reflected in our library spaces and services. They don’t feel that the library is their library.
• Our summer lunch site coordinator says they want to work together to keep kids reading, but they never communicate with us. 

Greta lead us through a few meaningful activities that enabled us to reflect, evaluate and collaborate with other youth service staff.  We discussed significant summer reading challenges and had the opportunity to create tools and techniques to address these challenges.  ​If you were unable to attend the workshop, try the following activities for yourself and with other youth services staff in your library. See what tools and techniques you come up with that could solve your key summer reading challenges.  

Activity 1: Storytime Share Time

Think of a story about the last activity you tried for the very first time.

• Was it exciting or scary?
• How did being a beginner help you?
• Share and discuss your answers or journal about them.

Activity 2: Why do we do summer reading?  What is the purpose of it all?

• Does what we do, and the events we offer meet the needs and requirements of our youth patrons and their families?
• Does what we collect, track, report provide a clear snapshot of what we provide? 
• What might we keep and what might we try differently to address the following:  Doing things in our specific community to help kids access reading, and to help families feel like they matter to the library and the library matters to them.  
• Re-read poem excerpt from Judy Brown.  Are we focusing on what matters? Are we remembering the big picture and reminding our colleagues that the mission is what matters.  Are we doing too much, not enough, are we helping kids access reading in the summer? Are we helping families feel like they matter to the library and does the library matter to them?

Activity 3: Brainstorm Interview Groups

• Choose a person to present and share one summer reading challenge that your library needs to address.
• Ask the presenter to shift the challenge into an ACTION question. Ask: "How might we...(say challenge here.) For example, "How might we transport teens to the library next summer?"  Then read the action question to the group.  Discuss with group.
• Other participants in group now interviews the presenter.  Ask questions about the challenge. What does your presenter wish were different, what makes the challenge unique, continue to ask why, why, why, dive deeper. 
• Interviewers offer brainstorming ideas/solutions for that challenge. Sketch out 4-6 ideas that could be solutions to the challenge.
• Make a prototype of the solution that your presenter agrees would be the best solution to the challenge.
• Remember to share your solution with others outside of your activity group.  Share with other staff for their input, share with library users, community members, etc for their input.

Taking the time to complete the above activities could provide some very helpful insight on your summer reading plans for next year.  Are you giving your fire enough space to burn?  Is your library focused on the summer reading mission? Are you doing too much, not enough, or just the right amount for summer reading programming? We hope that these activities provided you with some much needed breathing space to reflect and evaluate and to keep your summer reading fires burning!

Your Summer Reading Representatives

Greta Bergquist is our State Youth Services consultant.  The Summer Reading Chairs are Dena Chaffin (CSD) and Lisa Elliott (OYAN).   Feel free to contact them with your summer reading questions. 

Please look out for Zoom links to the Summer Reading office hours:

• Wed, Nov 3rd at 1pm
• Tues, Dec 7th at 1pm
• Wed, Jan 5th at 1pm
• Tues, Feb 1st at 1pm
• Wed, March 2nd at 1pm
• Tues, April 5th at 1pm
• Wed, May 4th at 1pm 

Author

Emily West
​North Plains Public Library
​CSD Incoming Co-Chair