February 26, 2024: Awards & Lists

Supervisor:  Renee Kirchner

Monday:  9am-2pm

This morning Renee and I went over some of my programming suggestions and fleshed out a few that might suit.  She will present these to the Programming group and see what everyone thinks.  I chose for the elementary age (6-8 years old) STEM programs since that category seemed to be missing from the idea pool.  The first suggestion was a Make It Move Challenge with matchbox cars, tape, glue, magnets, balloons, straws, and string.  This is a physics challenge as the goal is to race the cars on a paper track that can not be altered.  That means no ramps, no lifting the table, etc.  It should be pretty fun.  While the move challenge can be a stand alone event and last for an hour, the next 2 ideas would work ideally as part of a larger themed program.  First, DIY volcanoes are always fun.  This could be part of a larger Earth Science or Geology event.  I can envision stations:  volcano station, make a crater station, decorate your own rock, DIY kinetic sand, etc.  Second, is making ice cream in a bag.  This is a STEM idea covering topics of chemistry but could also work as part of a larger weather program, season program, cooking program, etc.  For the Tweens (9-12 years old)  I chose DIY magnetic slime (STEM) which could also work as part of a larger themed event, making Squishies, and a Music Fest which would feature stations for Freeze Dance, Song Jeopardy, and making your own guitar pick.  I personally like options that can be scaled up or down, made more age appropriate, and involve different activities so that more kids can find something they like.  

The afternoon was spent with Carole Chandler discussing award books and their purchasing peculiarities as well as CloudLibrary pros and cons.  The LPL displays books for the Caldecot, Newberry, Correta Scott King, and Pura Belpre awards.  They also feature the Bluebonnet contender books and the 2X2 book lists.  Lauren (world language librarian) is adding the Tejas Stars list this year.  Carole would also like to include an award for Native American authors and illustrators but those books are very difficult to find as they are mostly through small publishers.  Space also becomes a limiting factor as only the Bluebonnet and 2X2 books are pulled each year.  All other award books are kept as a continuing collection that only gets bigger.  

The limitations of space would make digital media seem like a windfall for any children’s collection.  However, the reality is far different.  The library uses CloudLibrary as their ebook and eaudio platform.  Unfortunately, most kids do NOT want to read or listen to digital books!  Additionally, not all children’s book formats lend themselves well to digitization.  Picture books use the “page turn reveal” as a fundamental feature.  Graphic novels are difficult to read digitally as poor image quality and fuzzy print are often problematic.  And audio books can have poor quality or unpleasant narrator voices.  For a lot of children’s books, the illustration does a lot of the storytelling.  How can that be translated well into digital formats?  Publishers, authors, and content providers are still trying to work that out.  These cons mostly deal with the quality of the product itself, but the pricing and licensing structures are also considered a confusing barrier.  Most licensing agreements use either a perpetual (you own it), 1 or 2 year licenses, or a 26 checkouts license.  The books are very expensive as well.  How to spend the budget is a bit like a Jenga puzzle.  You may not want to purchase the more expensive perpetual license for a title if the title probably won’t be popular for long.  Books that are consistently popular typically have the license that requires more frequent (so more expensive over time) renewal schemes.  Conversely, the pluses revolve around time savings.  Ebooks can be ordered with much less effort and time by the librarians, but only because they have already done the research work for the physical copy and apply those reviews and requests to the digital copies!  Carole mentioned an article from an author’s conference where they were asked how they saw digital formats affecting children’s books in the future.  Most saw little to no place for digital in children’s books.  One author theorized that if a book could be adapted to an interactive app, but NOT a digital copy of the book, that might find a niche.  Overall, he seemed skeptical.  And that may be the takeaway for digital children’s books- we are skeptical.