5 Tips for Evaluating Storytime

In order to keep improving at anything you need to periodically ask yourself an important question:

In order to best serve patron's librarians must consider both the why and how of what we are doing in all programming. Storytime is no different. In order to get better at providing storytimes, you must evaluate whether things are working, or whether you need to make changes.

For the past four years I've been working as a librarian I have done this kind of evaluation informally. For instance, I'd observe behavior during storytime. Did the kids seem engaged? Were they smiling? I want the kids to enjoy storytime, so if they aren't I clearly need to make improvements.

I also would view attendance as a performance measure. Is it increasing? How big of a crowd of regular attendees is there? I want to make sure I reach as large a group as possible. I also want to know that people see the value enough to keep returning.

Based on these measures I have made changes and developed a storytime routine that seems to work well for me and my community. For instance, when baby storytime struggled I tweaked the time and format until it gained a following.

After seeing how Jbrary did a formal storytime evaluation I was inspired to go beyond these measures. A new school year and series of storytimes seemed like the perfect time to try surveying parents and getting some formal feedback.

Using questions from Jbrary's form, and other forms distributed through the ALSC listserv, I came up with two different evaluation forms. One form was passed out at storytime and asks specific questions about the program. The other was shorter, simpler and geared towards those that have children but do not attend storytime. This second survey was posted on our website and distributed through our Facebook page.

Here are a few things I've learned through this process:

1. An important first step to evaluating storytime is determining what your goals for storytime are. As the wonderful Mel Depper of Mel's Desk points out, your goals will determine the evaluation questions you ask. One of my major goals is to try to fit in more evening/weekend storytimes, so I made sure to include a question on both surveys that asks about convenient times for this.

2. When surveying families distribute surveys widely to reach those who are not able to attend storytimes. Otherwise you are getting a skewed sample. I definitely need to find more channels to distribute my survey because so far over half the respondents to my second survey have attended my storytimes.

3. When asking certain questions, make sure you provide relevant information. For instance, I should have included our hours in my questions about convenient storytime times. Some of the responses I've received back mention times outside our operating hours.

4. Allow plenty of time to receive responses back. Parents are busy and it will probably take a few reminders to get them to fill out a survey. You may not get many responses. This is where the informal evaluation can come in handy to fill in the blanks.

5. Many times evaluating will lead to further questions and more evaluating. For instance, responses to my storytime scheduling question have lead me to to wonder if I need to reschedule my morning storytime as well. I will bring this up to current families and base my decision on what I find out.

How do you evaluate storytime? I would love to hear any opinions or ideas you have on this topic!

3rd time's the charm: Baby Storytime Tips and Tricks

Attendance at Baby Storytime has been a struggle for me ever since I started doing storytimes at my library. I've had to scrap and revamp it twice due to lack of attendance within the 3 1/2 years I've been a a Children's Librarian here.  I've had this thought many times:

It has only been in the last 3 months that things have really started to click with this age group. I regularly have over 10 babies and their caregivers come each week, which I consider a major victory after struggling for so long.

  Here are a few things I've learned along the way.

• Playtime is essential. After storytime I put some baby toys (donated by a family member) on our floor and allow the grown ups time to play with the babies and socialize with each other. Baby's benefit from the playtime, and the adults benefit from being able to talk to people who speak in full sentences.
• Lapsit is not a term many non librarians understand. One of the main reasons I switched the name of mine to Baby Storytime was that I kept being asked what Lapsit was. 
• Local groups can be a great resource. One of the main reasons for my recent upsurge in attendance is I changed the time of the storytime. A major reason for the time change was to make storytime fall right before a meeting of our local Mom's Club. The Mom's Club meets in the local Rec Center, just a parking lot away. This is perfect for parents who want to attend both.
• Repeat songs from week to week. Research shows that babies benefit from repetition. Repeating songs also helps caregivers learn the songs. I have about 20 songs I consider favorites, and alternate between these every week. The Cuckoo Clock Song and Wheels On the Bus are particular favorites, so they get sung each and every week. 
• Invite older siblings to tag along. The first time I tried baby storytime I heard from many parents that they couldn't come because they had nobody to watch their toddler/preschooler. My solution was to make it clear that they were welcome to come as well. The number of families who have taken me up on this has in no way been overwhelming. Preschoolers can also help model behavior (such as sitting and paying attention) for the older babies.
• For movement songs and bounces, use a doll to model movements for parents. This has helped a lot to show parents what I expect and how to interact with their babies during storytime.
• Keep at it! It can be hard to get babies in, but once you do it is so fun and so worth it. The earlier we can make an impact on a child the better. Not only do the babies benefit, but so does future program attendance as babies age into older programing.

For more information on my storytimes (and for storytime plans) see my storytime blog.

Baby Storytime Structure and Planning

For this post, I thought I'd share a little bit about how I structure and plan my baby storytimes. I always find it interesting to hear about how other children's librarians do things, so I figured sharing this information might be helpful to others.

A little background information:

• Baby Storytime is for babies under 2 years old, accompanied by their caregiver. 
• I do not require registration (mainly because we are a small town and have a smaller service population to begin with) 
• All storytimes are held in my storytime room.

Here are a few pictures of my storytime room:

A picture of our storytime tree, which was made by a local resident and transfered into this room during our recent renovations:

Here is my basic structure:

Baby Storytime always starts with our "Hello" song, which goes like this:

"(Baby's name) is here today, (Baby's name) is here today! Let's clap our hands and say "Hooray!" (Baby's name) is here today!"

Next we move on to our story. I don't have group sets of books, so I move around the room showing each individual baby the pictures.

After the story, I do a few bouncing songs. I always start with bounces because this is when the babies are most likely to be focused and still on the caregiver's lap. Towards the end some of the walkers tend to get antsy.

The rest of the stories consists of a variety of songs. I try to through in a few new songs each week, but many of the songs do repeat from week to week. Baby's thrive on repetition, so I feel it is important to their development to maintain this consistency.

I always end with the song "Bye Bye Baby" from the CD  Baby Face by Georgiana Stewart.

The final element is playtime. I put out a variety of toys and let the babies play. I think this aspect is important because it provides caregivers an opportunity to socialize. This makes it more fun for them, and more likely they'll bring the babies back to the library :)

As for planning, one of my favorite resources is Perry Public Library. They have a great pdf of songs and rhymes posted here. I also really like the ALSC website. They have helpful lists of rhymes and books. I've also gotten a lot of great ideas from other children's librarians, both in person and through listservs like PUBYAC.

Baby storytime is probably one of the most fun parts of my job. I love interacting with the babies and  caregivers and seeing how quickly they change and grow.

At the same time it is the hardest storytime to get attendance at. I have struggled to find the right time and day and recently moved it to Thursdays at 10:30 am. I'm hoping this will work better, but with babies you never know.

For more information on my storytime plans you can check out my storytime blog.