It completely makes sense, but does it happen at school systems around the country? And do parents follow through?
On September first, the Arlington (TX) Public Library is launching a campaign to get library cards into the hands of the estimated 50,000 children who attend pre-kindergarten through sixth grade.
Students who attend schools in the city limits will receive an application to take home to their parents. Once the application is signed, children can receive their card at the library or through the mail, Libraries Director Cary Siegfried said. More from the Star-Telegram.
What we do
The Tulsa City-County Library does this – and goes a step further.
“Books to Treasure” is an annual celebration of National Children’s Book Week the third week in November. The event encourages families to read aloud, and promotes the beauty of children’s book illustration. An illustrator ( this year it’s Jim Arnosky) is invited to Tulsa to visit second graders at local schools and talk and sign books at the Tulsa City-County Library. Every second grader enrolled in a public school is visited by a librarian through school visits – and every 2nd grader in Tulsa County receives a paperback book illustrated by the guest illustrator, and a library card featuring an illustration by the illustrator. The program is sponsored by the Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation and promoted by the Tulsa World and Tulsa City-County Library.
Ohh bad memories…
My library system did a program almost exactly like this last year, and while it was a great way to get cards into kids hands, it’s still not one of my fonder library memories.
Over 500 library card applications for our branch alone, all filled out in K-5 level handwriting…and guess who got to decipher/process/mail them all? On the bright side, I’ve become quite good at reading near-illegible handwriting.:)
Bookmobiles
In my local district in St Louis (Missouri) County, the county library visits the elementary schools with the bookmobile at regular intervals. This not only gets the library card in the hands of the students, but allows them to put it to use!
Now, it does seem a bit redundant since the bookmobile carries similar (but not neccessarily the same) titles as the school library. However, I remember as a student myself in this same district being overjoyed that I could get Judy Blume books from the bookmobile once the school board had banned them from the school libraries.
Well In This Day and Age
I’m totally in agreement with Jessmage. We had something like this go down at my former library and yeah, if there’s a hell it’s entering five year old handwriting into a database… and being forced to listen to the Bay City Rollers.
Anyway, in this day and age, if the school has an internet connection, and the library has an internet connection, and they have VPNs set up… there’d be no reason they couldn’t enter the stuff into the database back at the library from the class room. Heck a TightVNC session back to the office and you’re rollin’.
Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes. Tycho (Jerry Holkins) @ Penny Arcade