ILS 599 Plan to Improve Story Time at Greenville Public Library: Part 2

Part 2: Purpose/Justification of the project:

I propose to you, the Board of Directors, that we can better serve the members of our community by expanding our story time service online using Web 2.0 technology. Over the last two decades, Greenville has developed into suburbia for those who work in the capital city of Hartford, a commute of just 20 minutes. The town has experienced an extended period of expansion to accommodate the increasing number of families drawn to the area (especially families just starting to have children). The average family income is in the middle class or upper-middle class range; the local library spending per capita (as of 2007) $58.94/person.

We surveyed those who attend our Wednesday gathering and those who cannot and have found some repeating themes and requests. The results from the survey show a wide range of reasons why people have not been able attend story time. These reasons include but are not limited to the following: misinformation/confusion on date/time, the adult’s work schedule, illness (of child or parent), out of state/traveling, and a lot of miscellaneous reasons sited under ‘unexpected.’ We also included a question regarding the availability of a computer with internet capabilities in the home; out of our target audience of respondents, 69%, answered to the affirmative. We will continue providing our highly attended weekly story time onsite and expand our services in a few ways utilizing Web 2.0 technology:

My first proposal is the creation of a blog by myself, a librarian in the children’s library and head of story time services. One goal of my blog would be to promote our library’s story time: describing the events and turnout on Saturdays, providing a record what was successful and not, and providing a schedule for future story times and other events of the library. The other goal of the blog would be to increase community involvement in story times. Comments would be allowed for parents to recommend a certain title not listed, or share a great title to acquire for the library. All of these features are designed to allow the public to have a say and express what they want.

My second proposal is to supplement the story time blog, by creating a Del.icio.us account focused on story time and the importance of literacy in early childhood development. Del.icio.us is an online social bookmarking site, allowing your personal bookmarks to be viewed by others, as well as allowing you to view others saved sites. This will allow our community members as well as those who visit the library blog to be able to find other similar sites and resources.

My final (and most exciting) proposal is to make video recordings of a librarian reading stories. Initially I plan on using classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes and making them available online; members of the community will then be able to view story times from anywhere with an internet connection, at any time of day or night. I recognize potential for copyright infringement, this will be addressed in detail further into my proposal, but the literature read during our recorded story time will come from the Public Domain, instead of having to ask permission from copyright owners. The goal of this project will be to expand the range of the library’s story time services beyond our physical building to not only our community members, but to an audience comprised of all internet users in the surrounding communities and even beyond that.