Children's story hour moves to digital world

If you asked me, I would say the greatest contribution of the American public library over the last 100 years is story hour for children.

All across the land, public libraries of every size provide this free, intellectual stimulation for any kid who wants to come. Story hours introduce children to the magic of reading even before they can read themselves, inspiring them to want to read when they go to school.

Story hours are one of the first opportunities kids have to be in a public setting with other kids. Story hours are a way for children from vastly differing backgrounds to learn the stories and songs we share as Americans. Best of all, this has been going on for a very long time and is a ubiquitous a feature of cultural life in this country. While they might be pervasive, story hours have evolved over the years and are still morphing and changing to be appropriate for the children of the day.

Children's Librarian Lauren Collen happened into a program at a conference several years ago about the International Children's Digital Library (www.icdlbooks.org). It's an effort to make hundreds of children's books from around the world available online, in full-text, and for free. Started in 2002, the project now has about 2,000 titles available in more than 40 languages. The goal is an impressive 10,000 books!

A veteran presenter at preschool story hours, Collen knew the problems of reading a relatively small book to a sometimes large crowd of children: not everyone can see the book's illustrations and attention spans are short. Also, it's not easy for the presenter to read upside down or sideways while holding the book for viewing. From what she learned that day, Collen envisioned a new approach to story hour.

"It just seemed obvious to me," Collen said, "to project the illustrations from the book onto a wall or screen so they would be large and everyone could see. So I tried it, and it worked like a charm. The children's attention was directed toward the illustrations and not toward me as the presenter, and it just seemed to me to be a better way to introduce really good books to children."

Collen followed up on her experience and her own observation by setting up a research project to test her assumptions. A local preschool allowed her to work with their classes of 4-year- olds.

Thirty-two children were divided into two groups. Two appropriate picture books from ICDL were chosen for the study and copies of the books were also located. Each group of children heard and viewed both books either via the digital book or the traditional book. After each story whether digitally or traditionally told, there was a detailed discussion. All story times were videotaped and later the dialogue was transcribed.

Upon review and analysis of the tapes and transcriptions, Collen found the digital story times elicited higher level questions and comments. Children also seemed to focus better in the digital story times with less fidgeting.

Collen guesses she's pioneering this approach to story times. Recently we asked her to describe her process as well as her research at a training session here at the North Suburban Library System. Children's librarians who attended were very excited and many said they were going to try it. "I hope it catches on in a big way," Collen said. "From my research it's a better way to share books, especially with younger children."

Listen to my podcast with Lauren Collen this week at www.sarahlong.org for more details.