ILS 599 Plan to Improve Story Time at Greenville Public Library: Part 4

Part 4: Step by Step implementation:

Plan:

After I receive approval from the Board, I will fulfill our need for a recording device and will acquire a digital video recorder. I will then create a blog and a YouTube account. I have already created a Del.icio.us account and posted some websites for both staff and public use. I will start blogging right away, talking about past story times and tips I’ve learned on how to be a good story teller. I will create a permanent link to the Del.icio.us account, featuring links related to story time and the importance of early literacy, as well as links for the Greenville Public Library staff to use to find other works in the Public Domain (I created an account and tagged a few sites on my blog for ILS599, try it out). I will then work with library staff to tape a few initial well known fairy tales from Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book. Initially, recordings will not be done at Saturday story time, but reading an ‘extra’ story during official story time might help to create some traffic to the blog and story time recordings. My plan to promote the proposal is outlined in the next section. Set up is minimal, success of this proposal rests within out ability to continually maintain this service and the public’s involvement and interest.

Advertising:

No matter how great a program will be, if no one knows anything about it you might as well not continue the program. To alleviate this potential problem I plan on heavily using word of mouth. I will make sure all the library staff, especially those in the Children’s section, are aware about our new story time service and can answer any question posed to them intelligibly about the new story time on demand service. I will also need a small allocation of the library’s supply of paper and ink to create some signs to post around the Children’s Library at key locations, such as the entrance and near the computer station. I will target our main audience, those who already attend Saturday morning story times, and create hand outs to pass out. Online, I hope to have space to advertise the new blog and a link to YouTube to access the videos on both homepages of the library and the Children’s section. I will also try to read and comment on other public library blogs about story times hoping to create an online community and following.

Time:

My proposal is low on start up and maintenance costs, but I will need to have some allocated time to ensure the success. The actual set up of a blog, Del.icio.us, and YouTube account will not require more than an hour of work for the initial setup, and a few hours of staff time per week will be required to successfully maintain and keep them updated. Monitoring and keeping all accounts up to day can be done during unassigned or quiet times when I’m at the Reference Desk, or ever from the comfort of my own home.

The only parts that will require devoted staff time would be when recording the stories themselves; to read the stories and run the camera, I project that it would take about 2-3 staff members, one of which will be myself. If staff is needed elsewhere, or if the response from the community proves to be larger than anticipated, I can enlist the aid of our volunteer library pages to help on various tasks (recording, monitoring the blog, answering comments or questions, finding new sites). As for educating staff about Del.icio.us, some of the Children’s staff have their own personal Del.icio.us accounts, and will hopefully help spread word of how easy it is to create and use.

After we receive the digital recording camera and I have had a period of time to learn how to shoot, upload and post, I will offer a quick ten minute or less informal talk on how to use the camera. This camera is designed for simplicity and ease of use especially for the creation of videos to upload. We will be able to record multiple stories in a one hour session; we can periodically shoot a story or two at the Saturday morning story time, to have the benefit of a live audience and families wanting to see themselves. We would then have the option of releasing all the content on a specific day or uploading them to YouTube twice a week. I will lead the blog by writing posts, and if the other staff wishes to learn more about this technology, I will show them.