Overcoming the Obstacle Course: Teenage Boys and Reading

Overcoming the Obstacle Course: Teenage Boys and Reading

Jones, P., & Fiorelli, D. C. (2003). Overcoming the Obstacle Course: Teenage Boys and Reading. Teacher Librarian, 30(3), 9.

This article addresses the difficulty of reading among teenage boys in the U.S. Jones and Fiorelli summarize the current research that explains the reading and non-reading habits of boys. In it, they list suggestions about the following topics:

• What boys see as obstacles

• What the teacher-librarian can do

• Building a guy-friendly collection 

• Twenty great fiction books for grade 7 boys

• And a collection of success stories from teacher-librarians. 

• They also provide references to 30 sources where we can delve deeper into this topic. 

Evaluation: The issue of boys not reading is one that has been troubling me and should be one that all secondary teacher librarians should be addressing. This resource provides valuable information that can kickstart a librarian's effort to increase readership of adolescent boys. This allows us to take immediate action.

Toys at Chicago public library teach building blocks of code - without a computer.

Parnell, Jacqueline 

Jackson, C. V. (2017). Toys at Chicago public library teach building blocks of code - without a computer.

Learning Beautiful is a startup up company that specializes in creating Research-driven and Montessori-tested toys for young children. These toys are made of natural materials to preserve simplicity and craft that goes into their design. The Chicago Public Library system is Learning Beautiful’s first library customer and will have these toys available for use at their newly redesigned Thomas Hughes Children's Library at the Harold Washington Library Center.

What makes these toys so special is that they help teach children, as young as 3-years-old about the fundamentals of computer science. The toys are designed with concepts in mind such as binary numbers and pixels. The Chicago Public Library is already using toys such as BeeBots, Finch Robots, Cubetto, and Lego WeDo robotics kits to encourage computational thinking, design, and mindfulness. The idea behind bringing these toys to the library is that we don’t need high-tech toys or gadgets in order to teach children how to code. This is also an effort to match local schools in bringing more technology into early childhood learning. Chicago Public Library Commissioner Brian Bannon stated,

"We thought if our education system sees this, then we should be making the same kinds of things available, at scale, through our neighborhood libraries, and in our programs," Bannon said. "These kinds of programs are linked back to what we're trying to do as a city, which is building … curiosity in the children that we have in our city today in the careers that will drive our economy.”

The Learning Beautiful company has plans in the future to distribute their toys to other libraries and museums before making them available to homes.

This is a great collaborative effort and will allow so many children access to learning tools and building blocks in their educational endeavors. It would be wonderful to see these types of toys in every library.

Collection development trends in academic libraries

Horava, T. & Levine-Clark, M. (2016). Current trends in collection

development practices and policies. Collection Building, Vol. 35(4),

p.97-102.  https://doi.org/10.1108/CB-09-2016-0025

This journal article presents the results of a study done in 20

academic libraries. It explores the current trends in collection

development practices and policies in North American these

libraries. Items studied include their policies, demand-driven

acquisitions models, rationalizing legacy print as well as

local digital collections. A highly informative article to read if

you want to work in an academic library or currently are in

one, but need help with future collection development.

Censorship in prison libraries

Corrine Calvert

Bullinger, D., & Scott, K. (2017). Censorship in prison libraries. Retrieved from: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/96033/2017_MastersShowcasePoster_Bullinger_and_Scott.pdf?sequence=2

Summary: Prison libraries face a variety of censorship and intellectual freedom challenges. Formal collection development policies are lacking, and librarians must instead follow the regulations for each institution. Several topics are censored or banned, including pornography, content about social activism, theories of revolution, books which glamorize crime, and material that is considered a threat to security. Prison librarians don’t have final say on purchase orders and have limited funds for new materials. They often rely on donations, NGOs, and religious groups for new materials. Prisoners may see librarians as untrustworthy, which could be valid, since some prison libraries track borrower data and circulation records. ALA guidelines revised their Prisoner Right to Read Statement in 2010. It defends prisoners’ intellectual freedom, discourages censorship, and focuses on upholding the security of the institution. IFLA Guidelines for Library Services to Prisoners, revised in 2005, focus on improving literacy skills, lifelong learning, education levels, and personal lives, similar to the model of the public library. The authors conclude that firm collection development and censorship policies should be in place; that prison librarians should work with prison staff to ensure an environment that is safe and fosters learning; and that NGO partnerships can help provide current, relevant materials that support these unique patrons’ interests and learning goals.

Evaluation: My takeaway is that prison librarians have an extremely difficult job, and that they may have to fight harder to uphold the values of the library in their institutions. I was appalled although not exactly surprised that many prison libraries keep circulation data. I feel this is something that needs to stop, both in order to maintain the values of intellectual freedom and also to build trust among the patrons of the prison library. Although this is perhaps closer to an infographic than an article, I appreciated the efficient delivery of eye-opening data.

Overdrive to Offer Cost-Per-Circ Model for Ebooks and Audiobooks to Library and School Partners

DiBello, Amy

Bartholomew, H. (2018). Overdrive to Offer Cost-Per-Circ Model for Ebooks and Audiobooks to Library and School Partners. Overdrive Blogs. Retrieved from https://blogs.overdrive.com/general/2017/05/30/overdrive-offer-cost-per-circ-model-ebooks-audiobooks-library-school-partners/

https://blogs.overdrive.com/general/2017/05/30/overdrive-offer-cost-per-circ-model-ebooks-audiobooks-library-school-partners/

As I have been putting together presentation #4, I've been crunching the numbers on how to provide my library with more eBooks and eAudiobooks. Overdrive is taking a page from the hoopla playbook, and will soon offer cost-per-circ options for public and school libraries. 

This blog post by Hadie Bartholomew, Overdrive Communications Manager gives collection development librarians the means to meet patron-driven acquisition needs and libraries will only be charged when a patron actually borrows a title. It is possible to stay within a library budget and get patrons immediate access to an ebook without having to place a hold on a title.

My own public library uses hoopla, which has become one of my favorite apps, because it is ridiculously easy to use and has an excellent selection of books, movies, TV shows, music, and audio books to choose from. We are limited to five loans per month, so it will be interesting to see how Overdrive might change in the near future.

Collection Development and Management for 21st Century Library Collections: an Introduction by Vicki L. Gregory

Gregory, V. L. (2011). Collection development and management for 21^st century library collections: An introduction. New York: Neal-Schuman.

            I chose to read Collection development and management for 21^st century library collections: an introduction by Vicki L. Gregory in addition to the course textbook. It is a very readable, well-written, and thorough introduction to the subject. Although published seven years ago, it is still up-to-date on topics of both classic and recent interest. A selection of some chapters of interest:

Chapter 1: The impact of new technologies on collection development and management.

            The world wide web has made information so accessible that the demand has shifted from the traditional library core collection of a little bit about everything to the demand for everything, including very specialized resources. Gregory refers to The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (2006) to describe the many specialized titles that were more hidden before the internet and social media made everything available to anyone at any time. In this new age of “every possible resource must be available,” it is up to the librarian to act as a filter to find the best resources.

Chapter 7: Assessment and evaluation of the collection, including deselection (weeding).

            Gregory enumerates several ways of assessing a collection, including circulation statistics for any library (including database and eresource hits) and citation analysis of student and faculty papers to determine if there was a need to go to outside sources or if everything needed was found at the college or university library or website. She goes on to thoroughly discuss why weeding is so important, several tools and guidelines like CREW (continuous review, evaluation, and weeding) and MUSTIE (misleading, ugly, superceded, trivial, irrelevant, elsewhere). The sometimes outraged public reaction to weeding can be averted by constantly performing it rather than weeding a large portion of the collection all at once.

Chapter 10: Professional ethics and intellectual freedom.

            All library professionals are bound by personal and professional ethical standards. ALCTS (Association for Collections and Technical Services), a subgroup of ALA, has composed special guidelines in addition to the ALA general guidelines. Collection development and acquisitions librarians have unique issues because of their close contact with vendors and the spending of thousands or millions of dollars of institutional funds. The acceptance of gifts is one such issue, even of a meal. Gifts should never prejudice a decision towards or away from a vendor. With electronic media, patron privacy and confidentiality have become prime issues, as well. Gregory refers to ALA’s Library Bill of Rights to illustrate how to maintain intellectual freedom and refrain from censorship, even the self-censorship of not purchasing controversial materials in the first place.

Chapter 11: Preservation.

            Gregory gives a synopsis of physical preservation in libraries. Of interest is the special challenge of electronic resource preservation. One of the stumbling blocks of electronic formats, including hardware and software, is the swift pace of technological advancement that renders older formats redundant and sometimes unusable. For example, does anyone still have 8-track tape players available? Even carefully digitized or born-digital collections have to be migrated to newer platforms and file forms as technology progresses.

Chapter 12: The future of collection development and management.

            The future involves the ever-expanding role of electronic resources, of course, but also of the increasing local contribution of information, such as digital repositories of local research. Information literacy is of greater importance now than ever with the many competing unauthorized (and downright incorrect) resources available on the web. The author opines that the physical book will never completely vanish. I certainly hope so. Although I love the ease and speed of acquiring and using eaudiobooks, ebooks, and other online resources, I also appreciate the ease of reading, rereading, note taking, and referring back inherent in the physical paper form.