Saturday, August 30, 2008
Muddiest Point Week 1
Much was said this week about the information that Libraries have and the form in which the information is shared. It was mentioned that Libraries are spending less money on actual books. Is this true in the children's and teens' departments? As an observation at our area public Libraries, money seems to have remained constant in our children's department, and been added to in the area designed for teens. Is there research that divides the Public Libraries funding by targeted age group?
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2 comments:
I work in the children's department at a public library. I haven't worked there long, so I can't address the budget issue. I can tell you, however, that our main population (children birth through grade 6) does very little on the computers beyond playing games. Our local elementary schools encourage their students to use books as resources, not the Internet. Many of them, in fact, do not allow electronic resources. Books remain our focus, though I'm not so sure they should be as exclusive of a focus as they are.
One very practical aspect, however, is that of access points. I work in a somewhat urban/suburban environment with patrons of varied socioeconomic backgrounds. Most do not have internet access at home. Their only point of access is one of the two internet computers we have available. However, we have thousands of books available. If the entire fourth grade is doing a report on animals, I can only point two of them to the computer. I can point hundreds of them to the 590's in the Non-Fiction section.
Until we all have personal Internet access available to us 24/7, can we really count in it as being as accessible as a book? Can we/should we be devoting more time/energy/money towards technology than books?
(Geez, I sound like a Luddite. I'm a geek! Honest! I'm trying to get more Internet access available to kids...)
I too work in the Youth Services sector and can tell you that we have continued to purchase a large amount of books. What we have done on the computer end is the addition of Early Learning Stations. These are computers that do not have internet access and they do not require a library card id. to activate them. They provide children with educational games and activites. These are highly popular with both the parents and the children. We actually have to have a time limit/sign-up at many of our branches. This really just targets the younger age brackett,2-6 years, but you would be surprised how many 3rd graders you find playing on them also. It is a nice, safe alternative to an internet based computer.
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