Stay and Play: Create Open Library Spaces and STEM Material Collections for Play-Based Discovery Programming

Stay and Play: Create Open Library Spaces and STEM Material Collections for Play-Based Discovery Programming
Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
Idea Exchange, formerly known as Cambridge Public Libraries) serves a community of 133,000 people. They presented a talk about transforming their space, programs and collections to promote more play and discovery. "By changing one, we had to address all three."
They asked questions like:

"Do your programs have to be in the program room?"

"How much space do your collections deserve?"

Problem: Too much stuff

"We have a different sort of lens when it comes to garbage... We wait for a day it can become a castle, a Minecraft program..."

The problem is, "It's NOT OUR STUFF." The programming stuff only serves a purpose if it's used.

Problem: Not enough space for program attendees

They have 50 programs for children every week! Long lines, disgruntled patrons... (sound familiar?) They had to redo their library's space.

When Canada changed their kindergarten model to give 3 and 4 year olds full day kindergarten, Idea Exchange realized they needed to increase their play programs for 3 and 4 year olds too. They decided to use this as an opportunity to bring all of the stuff out of the closet. They started with a program called "Explore on the Floor": 6-8 discovery centers throughout the children's department. It doesn't have to be expensive. They did simple things like dinosaur footprints on the floor, music to give the program a beginning and end point. It did get messy, and they recommend tarps-- hamster shavings don't come out of the carpet! :) They also recommend allotting cleanup time in the children's department schedule.

Stay and Play program: No registration, no specific time. No staff needed to be assigned beyond the person at the desk. This was simply a passive program designed to get that stuff out of the closet!

"We can be victims of our own success at times..." They had broadly defined flyers for the programs but one family was upset because they thought you could do everything that was advertised.

Fears:

Fear of losing stuff: "losing bits and pieces is the cost of doing business!" Incorporate replacements into your budget.

Loss of the expert: Change from an expert/performer to a facilitator role. "The kids often figure it out and teach us!"

Risky play: Programs require caregivers to be ACTIVE and make judgments about what children can do, and what they can't do.

Take stock of your stuff and put it out there on the floor.

"Don't be a slave to the theme!!!"

At Idea Express, when you have a desk shift, you are not just working on the desk. You are also organizing the play space and helping people through it, not just sitting and doing work waiting for people to come to you.

Collections Vs. Programs

Over time, librarians at Idea Exchange were noticing changes in the way the library was being used. Circulation was down and program attendance was up. So they made a case for collection money to be allocated to STEAM program materials. They analyzed their collections and recommended reducing adult nonfiction. They needed support from senior leadership. They couldn't use the money for technology infrastructure. They looked for play materials that could possibly circulate to the public down the road.

Problem: Bought stuff too quickly... Everything was stored in an office.

Know where you're going to store everything. Have a plan for whether you're going to catalog everything or RFID tag it.

They have a really cool quarterly magazine for sharing their programs--like our Off the Shelf. "Each quarter, you will find program and course information for children, teens and adults, special events listings, and exhibition openings and closings. The full colour magazine is also devoted to sharing stories about our community and its members. Stories that will educate, inform, challenge and inspire you. Copies are available at all locations of Idea Exchange, be sure to pick up your copy the next time you visit!" (https://ideaexchange.org/about/idea/idea-exchange-magazine)

They changed the way they do school tours. Instead of just showing kids the building and the books, kids come in for a learning experience.

They recommend that libraries identify $500 of collections whose circulation has declined, and commit this collection material budget for STEAM materials.

Spaces:

When rethinking their spaces, they asked: "Are our spaces static? Do they offer opportunities to initiate learning and play?" It's not about color choices and displays. "If we fail to take ownership of our spaces, we become the rejected book on the shelf that people will judge by its cover." I loved how they said that spaces "need to be designed for the daily experiences in them." They said you should think of your shelves like prime real estate. Circulating materials get beachfront, noncirculating get evicted. Some collections have 700 checkouts per shelf, others have 44 per shelf. At IdeaExchange, they cut their collection by 30% and still saw a 10% increase in fiction circ and an 18% increase in nonfiction circ! This is really what lit the fire in me to examine our juvenile foreign language collections and see if we were getting the best bang for our buck in that area of the library.

IdeaExchange librarians recommended that libraries "move from housing books to building relationships." Why do you have so much room for books and no room for strollers? They created opportunities for adults to play with the same resources that the kids got to play with. They retrofitted their shelving with casters, so that shelves could be moved around to create more flexible spaces.

They created something called an "Active Living collection": kids borrow sports equipment and use it at the outdoor space the library shares with the nearby high school! Kids just grab the tag of the equipment of their choice and bring it to the desk, where the real item is ready to be checked out. Pretty cool!