Community Library Programs That Work: Building Youth and Family Literacy

by Beth Christina Maddigan, Susan C Bloos

A collection of versatile best practices for promoting literacy development by utilizing local community connections in school and public libraries.

Modern libraries are recreating themselves as idea centers for today's Internet-savvy, digitally driven clientele. This book provides a fresh approach to learning as well as guidelines for creating dynamic and relevant library programs for children, teens, and families. Organized thematically, each chapter includes relevant topical research and three to eight community-focused approaches. Programs range from small, single-library initiatives in rural communities to multi-site, cross-border initiatives. This essential reference includes collaborative and locally inspired programs, many of which can be scaled to the budget of any library, school, or community organization.

230 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2013

Reviews

[Jenna (Falling Letters) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote the following annotation in Jan. 2019 for a course on children's services:

Maddigan and Bloos present 41 programs crowd-sourced from various libraries, with an emphasis on Canadian libraries. An introductory chapter explores how to work within a community-based framework by providing strategies for understanding, describing, and collaborating with a library’s community. The remaining eight chapters describe programs grouped by function, such as ‘programs for reaching out to everybody’ and ‘programs that develop family literacy’. Each program profiled includes: target audience, community connections, program description, outcomes and benefits, how it works, supplies and materials, budget, marketing and promotion, and contact information. All programs require partnering with local organizations, as described under ‘community connections’. The innovative and practical programs can be implemented as described or easily adapted to better suit a particular situation. Each of the programs described were successfully implemented in various library communities, offering many encouraging examples of the impact of community-based programming. Community Library Programs that Work is a valuable resource for its emphasis on and support of the increasingly important role of the library as community-builder.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW! Published in 2013, despite that almost every library mentioned is in CANADA, this is still a valuable resource for library managers and programming specialists.
It teaches you to train yourself with every program to do "create deliver assess reflect refine learn and repeat"
There are 41 programs that:
-Develop family literacy, spark creativity, encourage personal growth, foster reading and writing, connect us culturally/internationally, reading diverse and unique demographics, genealogy and history and build the community.
Each program includes who it serves, its goals, the outline, the partners/collaborators, budget, model, evaluations, how-to amp it up or downsize the concept, how to do it yourself, additional reads and contact at library mentioned. Let it be noted that 16 of the 41 programs are passive or contests.

Develop Family literacy: community quest aka amazing race, storywalk, let us (the community) surprise you contest, newcomer bus tour, geocaching in your neighborhood (teens)
F.E.A.S.T (Families eating and story telling), Doorways (aka Family Traditions activity) (geared for kids and grandparents) that include topics of what makes me special/who lives with me/family tree/family traditions,
Spark Creativity: Pioneer Student Life, Reminisce Kits/Scrapbooking,
Encourage Personal Growth: Teen Moms Storytime Early Literacy Education, Storybook Dads (incarcerated fathers), Digital Literacy Outreach (underserved community youth), Computer Buddies (aka teens teach tech), Bike Mobile Outreach
Connect us Culturally: Postcards from Around the World, Diwali Celebration, Embrace Diversity Storytime and Songs, Online Book Group for Kids
Foster a Love of Reading and Writing: Battle of the Books Teen Trivia game, a similar concept but for 5th graders, a similar concept but tie-in with schools for 4th and 5th graders, a short story contest, a ghost story contest, a youth writing contest, and a poetry contest for youth;
Reaching Diverse and Unique (AKA mostly Teen) Demographics: Booksmart Water Smart (swim pass for local pool for new library card sign-ups), Babysitting 101 for teens, multi session teen spa, multi session teen youth in art cultural programs that culminate in a big arts festival, choose civility for adults, we Dare you! a very creative and contemporary teen version of Summer Learning program, Elf Gift making workshop for kids for their grownups, Music Rocks (basically a music appreciation/instruction club for teens), Drama Club (diy play in 8 sessions for elementary school kids), TAG create puppet show for Early Literacy (been wanting our system to do this FOREVER),
Building Community: Grand Pair of Readers contest (16 activities, sign up a kid and an adult preferrably grandparent to complete for a t-shirt and some prize), Family Activity card (16 card bingo but all of the activities are FAMILY oriented), Storytime Anytime (creative outreach of online videos of storytime sessions), Where in the Library (scavenger hunt for Early Literacy for a character, prize given monthly), and a special Early Literacy event that has Early Literacy authors and writers and writing for little ones;

[Marcela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was chock-full of great ideas, and I kept wishing it was available in open source format online.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some great community-building and family-building programs in here. I hope to incorporate a few of them into my libraries.