TIME TO READ

Everybody's Reading Toolkit

BURY

Reading Lifelines STAR team

Aims

To raise awareness of library services To increase target group's confidence in reading to and with their children To build basic ICT skills To learn what participants would like from our service To form the core of regular library based parent and toddler sessions

Where

In nurseries and Mother and Toddler groups in East Ward of Bury

Target group

Young parents 16-25yrs

What took place

As Bury chose the ICT route and bought three laptops and peripheral equipment, with the idea of bringing the project to the people, we set up a team to deliver projects. We decided to build on contacts made with clinics and nurseries as a result of our Story Start programme and to target young parents.

Our name STARteam initially stood both for Story Telling and Reading Team, and Success To All Readers.

Money from the project was used to buy 5 themed collections of books, videos and CD-ROMs to be used as family learning boxes.

Chosen themes were:

Doyouthinkasaurus - dinosaurs
Monster machines - travel and transport
Dungeons and dragons - knights and castles
You and me - your body and how it works
Science fantastic - which included arithmetic

We also used books from our previously established parenting collection.

We planned four half-day sessions based around these and other resources and offered them to nurseries etc. in the target area.

The sessions were:

Introducing the STARter boxes
Story telling and choosing books
The parenting collection
ICT and the Internet

Each involved two or three members of the team and allowed plenty of time for general discussion and hands-on activity after a brief introduction.

We planned to use the sessions to publicise our target branch of Topping Fold, a newly opened outreach library in a converted shop, and form the core of a regular parent and child club.

We also publicised the service to other agencies via a letter & a leaflet designed to appeal to the young people.

What happened

We offered the sessions to nurseries in the area and had a reasonable take-up although some of the mothers were over the target age. Problems arose when we tried to start the library sessions, the last session was ICT and we invited everybody back to the branch for free surfing and story telling sessions but got no take up.

Tips, Strengths and weaknesses

The boxes are an attractive and portable way of bringing a range of library resources to the attention of non-users
The semi-structured outreach sessions worked well, but in our anxiety not to be too prescriptive about what we would offer in the library we may have fallen into the opposite trap of vagueness about what we could offer.
In retrospect this could be remedied by developing worksheets based on the boxes and encouraged groups to produce their own work inspired by it.
The team approach was dictated by our lack of outreach worker, different people ran each session and we were unable to build up much rapport with the groups we worked with. Other commitments meant that, although some of us did two or three sessions, nobody was present at all four.

Tips

You don't have to buy new stock for the boxes, simply take themed material from existing resources. Just make sure it's new looking.
Try and tailor contents to interests of individual groups and include things to occupy the children while the parents talk.
Don't put in anything which won't be available for use and, if possible, for loan when they visit the library.
Try and hold at least one session in the library, avoid being seen as just a visiting speaker