 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. We're a webinar. Some people call it webinar, webcast, online show, whatever you want to call us. We are here live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time. However, if you are unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. We do record the show every week and they're posted to our website so you can watch any of our recordings. And I'll show you that at the end of today's show where all our recordings are so you can go there and see them. We do a mixture of things here on Encompass Live, presentations, book reviews, interviews, short training, many training sessions. Basically anything that is library related, we are happy to have it on the show. We do sometimes have Nebraska Library Commission staff that attend the show or that present on the show and we also bring in guest speakers sometimes. And that's what we have this morning on the line with us just from right next door in in Iowa is Jennifer Jordan Breck. Did I pronounce that correctly? Yes, you did. Awesome. And she's at the North Liberty Community Library in Iowa and she's got this great presentation about womb literacy, about getting into literacy and getting reading on board with your children before they're even born. So I'm just gonna hand over to you, Jennifer, to take it away and tell us all about your program. All right, thanks. Hi, everyone. Thanks, Krista, for inviting me to be a guest on your program. My name is Jennifer Jordan Breck and I'm the Assistant Director at the North Liberty Community Library in North Liberty, Iowa. I do apologize in advance. I'm working through a cold so hopefully you can bear with the few sniffles with me here. But today I'm going to talk about our womb literacy initiative and the programs I developed for it. I'll share with you my own personal story, which was the foundation for this concept. We'll take a look at a few statistics that underscore the importance of why libraries should consider offering this type of program to their patrons. And then we'll talk about how this initiative can be scaled to really any size public library from the small and rural to the largest of library systems and any size in between. Womb literacy is based on my belief that just as it's never too late to learn literacy skills and develop a level of reading, it's never too early either. I believe we as libraries are now to remember we can and should move this benchmark up even earlier to while the child is still in the womb. Since libraries are great advocates of literacy and there's such a critical need for literacy programs we can continue making an impact by considering to offer womb literacy programming. One moment I think my slides got out of order so let me go back to my backup slides here. Let's take a moment to think about the evolution of literacy. Literacy is learning to read and write and at one time was thought of something only male adults needed to know. Eventually when we realized it was important for women and children to know how to read and write as well we started teaching literacy skills to them and to kids over time after doing lots of studies research showed that being proficient in reading by the end of third grade was an important indicator of kids future success in school. If children were behind when starting fourth grade unfortunately they tended to stay behind so efforts were focused in helping kids with their literacy skills at this age. Then a few years later after collecting more information we realized it would be good to reach kids even earlier so we moved that benchmark up to before they started school. You've all heard the words early literacy being used in schools and your libraries. Early literacy does not mean early reading. Just as when libraries are offering their early literacy programs we're not expecting two-year-olds to be able to read. Rather we're preparing them helping them to learn those skills necessary so they'll be able to learn to read and write when entering school. Libraries do what we can to help this cause by offering preschool story times and summer reading programs. Recently that benchmark has been moved up earlier still to encompass reaching out to kids from birth to 24 months. These programs go by a variety of names like mother who's on the loose, baby and me or simply baby story time but they all have similar goals. Our library began offering a my baby story time in January of 2015 and it's been well received and very popular. Wound Literacy is a cutting-edge initiative that will encourage expecting families to develop daily literacy habits like reading to their child before they're born. It will educate expecting parents about their role as their child's first teacher by learning about early literacy skills and how children learn those skills. It will encourage positive interactions between the parent and child and between the child and books. It will encourage parents to start a routine of coming to the library before their child is born and enable them to begin developing a network of support with others going through the same stage in life all before their child is born. So we can continue it after the child is born. By learning about these literacy skills and developing daily literacy habits while their child is still in the womb expecting parents will feel more confident as their child's first teacher and have the knowledge needed to continue those habits after baby arrives. If expecting parents can start or at least be aware of this information before the child arrives it will be much easier to continue it afterwards. Those habits and routines will be already in place and early literacy won't be something else they have to start learning about. Admits the chaos all newborns bring. Wound Literacy does not mean reading and writing in the womb nor does it mean babies will be born knowing how to read and write. It's simply moving the time frame up from that birth to 24 month age libraries are focusing on now to the months before they're born focusing on the expecting parents. So here's my story. The idea for womb literacy is based on my own personal experiences as a mom. I like most expecting parents did what I could to prepare myself for the birth of our first child. I read the books, I tried to eat healthy and exercise, went to my prenatal appointments, took my daily vitamins, but in reality it's very difficult to simulate what life will be like after under the joy has arrived. Until you've actually gone through the experiences of becoming a parent and are holding that child in your arms, it's nearly impossible to understand what's in store for you. I think I was pretty much the typical mom in my experiences. Transitioning into parenthood can be not only extremely rewarding, but also frustrating at times. And most of us can remember a moment or two when we felt overwhelmed. There's so many details to tend to and decisions to make. How are you going to feed your child? Are you going to use cloth or disposable diapers? Who's going to care for your child and really how do those strollers and car seats work? I decided to stay at home after our first son Jacob was born and actually had visions of pot roast meals going on the table every night. But needless to say, there were many adjustments my husband and I both had to make after bringing our baby home. If you have your baby in hospital, they give you a crash course on caring for your child right before they send you home. We learned how to feed, bathe, change his diaper, hold Jacob, and even the correct position he should be sleeping in. But nobody showed us the correct way to read to him or talked about how very important that was to do with him from day one. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a board book and some literacy information while we were in the hospital. But it along with all the other baby paraphernalia we'd gotten from the hospital was put into a pile in the corner of our living room, where it stayed until my husband finally sorted through it weeks or months later. I hadn't started my library career yet, but I knew it was important to read to my child. It was just a struggle to start doing it. Establishing a daily reading routine wasn't high on my priority list when we were trying to figure out daily sleeping and eating routines. I meant to get to it, but honestly, it was just one more thing on my ever growing to do list. Although I read to him some days, it didn't get accomplished as often as I would have liked. When you're lacking sleep adjusting to your new role of being a parent, trying to get in a shower every few days, you're in survival mode, and lots of things get put aside till tomorrow. At least it did for me. When our second son arrived 18 months later, we were reading more. But it wasn't till I started working part time at a library the following year that I could see firsthand exactly how critical regular reading times were to setting kids up to be successful later in life. When we were expecting our third boy, we had our reading routines down. But yet I still don't remember consciously including him in our reading times, or encouraging the other two boys to practice their literacy skills by reading to their brother that had yet to be born. My personal struggles to start and maintain a regular reading routine with my boys laid the foundation for this concept. And my aha moment came when I was at a library conference, listening to a session on the early literacy program, Reach Out and Read. If you're not familiar with this program, it consists of doctors and nurses promoting early literacy by giving books and a prescription to read to children when they come for their well baby checkups. I remember that time vividly. The speaker was explaining the details of the program. And I kept thinking about my own personal experiences. And I literally wanted to stand up and shout, no, it's too late. It's too late waiting till their baby checkup to encourage reading with them. It needs to be done sooner. Now, of course, we all know it's never too late to work on your literacy skills. But my point was, we need to move that timeframe up earlier to like during the prenatal checkups when the mom goes to her OBGYN doctor before the child is even born. When I was going to my third child's well checkups, by the time I was actually sitting in the doctor's office and she was giving me that board book, I'd already dealt with traffic, a parking ramp, two kids in a stroller and a third child trying to help me push that stroller. We'd already gone through a skywalk, taken a couple of elevator rides, you know, before we found ourselves sitting in the waiting room, where every other child, of course, was trying to touch all of the other toys. For many people, well baby checkups can be stressful. Parents may have questions on milestones and developmental concerns. Their child may be colicky or not eating enough or sleeping enough or growing enough. We get quizzed by the doctor on what our child is and isn't doing. And in the back of our minds, we all know what's coming at the end of those appointments, wrestling our children still so they can get those shots. You know, sometimes it took three grown adults working as a team to administer them. And then the tears that were mostly my child followed. I kept thinking if we could only reach these families sooner, start those literacy habits before the baby arrives, then I felt I would have had a much better chance at sticking with my, with it more regularly, and better prepared to be my child's first teacher. So I thought about this concept off and on, but it didn't get much further than that. I was a busy working mom of three and had plenty on my plate to keep me occupied. But last year when I became the assistant director at our library, the timing was finally right to start doing something about it. It had been percolating in my head for almost a decade. So I shared my thoughts with my director. She thought it was a great idea and said go for it. So here I am sharing my thoughts with all of you. I like this quote by author Kate De Camillo. Reading should not be presented to a child as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift. If you're a new parent and trying to establish a reading routine, it can be frustrating. For me, that bedtime reading ritual was a struggle. Sometimes reading to my children, especially at the end of a long day with them, was not always the special bonding time it should have been. They may still want to play weren't ready to quiet down while I was more than ready for the day to be done. So I started reading at other times when they first woke up in the morning or from naps or after lunch. It was much more enjoyable for them and me. We all know that it doesn't really matter when you read together just that you do it. And if we can educate expecting parents on the importance of reading daily to their children while they're still in the womb, it will become a habit that they can more successfully continue afterward. It will just seem natural not forced because it was a routine they had already been doing for a few months. There are a variety of current early literacy programs that are targeting the targeting the child and their families. The born to read program gives a book and literacy information to the child after they're born and my first two boys were recipients of this program. The reach out and read program that I learned about at that conference was available to my third son during his doctor appointments. And the every child ready to read program is aimed at parents and caregivers. And in fact, they're rolling out a second edition that continues to work with the parents and caregiver while focusing on community partnership and outreach efforts. All of these literacy programs are good. They are making a difference and need to continue. However, they are all targeting the child after they're born. Womb literacy moves that benchmark up in time to before the child is born so that expecting families can start developing good literacy habits before the birth making it easier to continue those habits after the child is born. Now what program would be complete without some statistics? So I'm going to do my part here and share some of them with you. This concept is not only based just on my personal experiences but lots of stats are out there to demonstrate the need to reach out to kids at an earlier age. This information is taken from the reach out and read Iowa website and it indicates that fewer than half of parents in the U.S. reach their younger children daily. 35% of children entering kindergarten today lack the basic language skills needed to learn to read. And children who read on grade level by the end of third grade are more successful in school work and in life. These stats were taken from the Kids Count data book which is an annual publication that assesses child well-being nationally and it's part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Kids Count project. This data book gives each each state's profile so you can see how well or poorly your state is doing compared with other states. The education indicators of child well-being show that in 2013 a national average of 66% of fourth graders were not proficient in reading. That same year 83% of African-American fourth graders were also not proficient in rooting and a national average from 2011 to 2013 show 54% of children were not attending preschool. They were somewhere else like in-home day cares and you know in-home day cares as well teach children but they're not in that formal educational setting where they're being prepped to be ready to learn. You may think that this is a problem in other states or countries but in Iowa we had in 2013 62% of our fourth graders who weren't proficient in reading which that quite honestly surprised me. Our library is minutes away from Iowa City which is not only home to the University of Iowa in a world-class hospital system but the city itself in 2008 was designated as the world's third city of literature by UNESCO. That stands for the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. So that's pretty cool and as a result of this designation we have lots of literature festivals and activities going on year-round that promote literacy. However you know we still need to improve as well and I'll share a story with you last year. I'm at a library meeting a librarian shared a story about a kindergarten teacher that had just started the school year and so as the kids were coming into school that first day she was giving them books so they could kind of rouse them while everyone else was getting settled in and she noticed one little girl who had the book upside down she was trying to swipe at it and she was making those pinching motions. She thought it was an electronic device she didn't know it was a book she didn't know how to hold it or what to do with it. The teacher came to her explained it was a book showed her how to hold it and turn the pages I was just as shocked as the teacher was when I heard this story and it really emphasized to me just how much work we have yet to do. This is a problem everywhere and we as librarians and libraries have a role to play in that solution. One more stat for you I don't know if you're aware or not being our neighbors that Iowa lawmakers have passed the major education reform initiative recently and a key part of that reform law is third grade retention. So starting May 2017 students who are below grade reading level by the spring of third grade may be required to repeat that grade however they could enroll in an intensive summer reading program to progress to fourth grade. This still isn't fully defined I think it's going to put a lot of stress on our school system and our teachers who are already doing all that they can. Third grade is a critical year where students transition from learning to read to reading to learn. So enough of our stats we're going to go ahead now and talk about the room literacy initiative that I created. There are three programs under this umbrella. The baby fair kicked off our initiative and helped to draw awareness to the concept. The Stork Storytime podcasts are designed to educate expecting parents on their role in their child's literacy development and learn about early literacy skills. Read to the Bump is dependent on funding. We are just beginning to more fully develop this program but it was the original concept that I started with when I was creating this initiative when I was wishing I could have received board books during my prenatal appointments with my OBGYN doctor instead of during my child's well-baby checkups. I'll explain each program in more detail and while I'm doing that you can hopefully start envisioning how you might be able to adapt this concept at your library. We held our first baby fair last Sunday or Sunday August 30th 2015 so it was last year. The purpose of the fair was to gather in one location a variety of local businesses and nonprofit organizations for expecting parents to talk to, collect information from and learn about what resources our community has to offer for both before and after their baby's arrival. We put this baby fair on at basically no cost to the library now. Of course there was staff time which was mainly mine using contacting the potential vendors the general development and coordination of the event and our marketing person did create promotional pieces for it but as our new initiative does not have a budget we were creative with how we could offer this event at no charge to not only the public but the vendors too. So I approached Mercy Hospital by with City and asked if they'd be willing to sponsor tote bags for the public. As you see there's a picture here of it we were able to get in exchange for their logo being on the bag and name on our flyers they gave us a hundred tote bags that you see here and they were the perfect size for the expecting families to collect information from the vendors. We had a mix of nonprofit organizations and businesses but we didn't invite the independent consultant home type businesses. We really wanted to keep to organizations or businesses that were viewed as a resource to the public. I didn't want the public to feel like they're going into an environment where they were being pressured to buy something. There were some businesses that we felt didn't fit in with that mission and so for them I offered the option of putting their materials in the tote bags and everyone seemed to be happy with this compromise. It was the sharing of information we were after and I think we very much stayed within those parameters. I was really happy with the scope and variety of our vendors. We had hospitals and doulas early intervention and need-based organizations, a variety of support groups and mom's clubs, businesses that were centered around family fun activities. One of my favorite organizations that I found out about was Hygit Baby as you can see in the first picture. This is for new parents and it's groups of in over 100 cities around the country and they're dedicated to getting families together and out into nature with newborns and little ones for free so that's pretty cool. We had over 100 people attend the fair and they spoke to 40 vendors that had about approximately 85 people staffing those booths. Everyone from the vendors to the attendees to me thought it was a great success. We had city department participating which was wonderful. Of course the library was there sharing information about all of our story times and our initiative. Our aquatics center was available to talk about the baby swim classes they offer and show people what to do if a baby's choking. Our police department was out helping do the car seat safety checks and an unexpected benefit to this baby fair was the sharing of resources and information, not just between the vendors in the public but amongst the vendors themselves. I had many of them comment to me they were happy to be able to meet so many other organizations, find out what they're able to offer to the public and make those connections with the people that they could then take back and share with their own customers. We offered a variety of activities families could participate in while they were at the fair. These included a car seat safety check done in our parking lot. Out of all the cars that they checked they found two that were on recall lists and they were also able to gift free of charge a seat that no longer fit a child when a family could not afford to purchase one. The Iowa kid site via our local lions group offered vision screenings for kids from six month to kindergarten and volunteers shout out to them they're crucial to the success of many library programs as you're all aware. If you're not utilizing volunteers I highly recommend them. I wouldn't have been able to put this fair on without the help of so many volunteers. The vendors all donated their time. We had four greeters two at each entrance who welcomed our attendees and handed out a program flyer and tote bag. They also escorted the vendors to their tables before the fair began. These safe kids Johnson County who did the car seat checks brought a total of 10 volunteers with them. We also had a photo booth from a local photographer so expecting families could capture this moment in time and a local chiropractic clinic gave spinal screenings. Next year which is now actually this August we plan on expanding the activities by adding mini sessions of some of the programs that the library offers so people can do like 20 minutes worth of baby yoga baby storytelling and a we sing music program. So this will enable families to experience some of the programs they're missing out on if they aren't visiting us throughout the year and it will give those families already with children something to do at the event. Many of the organizations donated a door prize which we carnated by holding a drawing and calling the winners. We had quite a variety as you can see here including gift baskets books and gift certificates to prenatal classes. Feedback from the vendors included these comments I thought the baby fair was a great success I look forward to future fairs. Kristen said I thought it was a wonderful event I hope all libraries catch on to this way of serving our communities. Someone else said thank you for including us in this event I found it to be a great community opportunity and thought it was well attended well organized job well done and she gave me a smiley face so that made me feel good. My favorite cover from the event was from an expecting parent Amanda said I feel more comfortable in my role as a new mom now so mission accomplished. On to our second program within the womb literacy and that is our story time we've modified the format of this program already and we'll talk about both options since either one would work well for libraries. The concept of a story time is that it's geared toward new and expecting parents and not the kids. They will learn about early literacy skills and how children learn them and it will help them build confidence as parents in their role as their child's first teacher. Initially we wanted to offer an actual story time at the library for the expecting parents. The goals were to encourage expecting parents to get into the habit of coming to the library and story time before their baby's born. The hope was if they could establish this habit before baby arrives again it'll be easier to continue visiting the library after their baby's born. The story time would also offer an environment where expecting families can share their common experiences and provide support to each other. We feel libraries are an excellent position to offer this type of program for our yet to be born patrons and their families and it would be a natural segue to that birth to 24-month story times most libraries are already offering. My original thoughts on the structure of this is it would be a nine-month program offered monthly September through May at the library. So here just for reference I put up the format for the story time which we modeled after other story times modifying it slightly to accommodate adult instead of child participants. So the my baby story time on the left and stroke story time is on the right. Usually the story times have a theme that's based on the season or specific topic while each stroke story time would be based on a different early literacy skill. Baby story times start out with singing in a welcome song while our stroke story times would explain the concept of womb literacy and what literacy skill we'd be learning about. The library component for the traditional story time includes reading books, singing songs, rhymes and doing finger plays. For our stroke story times we'd have a guest speaker who would share with expecting parents information on that specific or early literacy skill and how children learn that skill. The library would speak for a few minutes on how we can support that literacy skill via our collections and programs. At the end of our baby story times we bring out some toys that facilitate children playing with each other and the toys. And for our preschool story times you know we have a craft at the end but the stroke story times we want that social time to enable the parents to start forming networks of support with others who are going through the same life events. We offered a couple of story times and we did have people attend but we realized it takes time to get new programs up and going and it's difficult to offer a program for a targeted audience like expecting parents at a set day and a set time and expect everyone to be able to make it. Our community is rapidly growing but this format for a story time might be better suited for even larger libraries than us that have a wider audience base to start with. We feel this type of programming is important though and we wanted to continue getting the information out so we did some brainstorming and came up with the concept of creating a podcast instead. The podcasts will be geared toward anyone who's thinking about starting a family is already expecting or has recently become a parent. They can listen when it's convenient for them whether that's during their commute, 2 a.m. feeding, or an afternoon nap time. We're really excited about this format because it'll enable us to reach expecting families from all over not just those that frequent our library. We've posted our initial podcast and we'll be getting additional ones recorded soon. You can access it from our website which I have a screenshot there for your reference. It's northlibertylibrary.org. It's also available from SoundCloud and iTunes. You can simply search for womb literacy or the name North Liberty Community Library. During the podcasts we're going with experts on a different early literacy skill and here they are for your reference if you're not familiar with them. The American Library Association has identified six early literacy skills that children need to learn in order to be prepared to learn to read and write when they start school. The Every Child Ready to Read program describes these literacy skills in this context. Print and motivation is teaching children that reading is fun. So during our story times we stress to parents that it's important to have fun when reading to your baby. It should be a special time that both the parent and child enjoy. Enrich vocabulary is knowing the different names of a variety of things so they know words. Print awareness includes knowing how to handle a book, following the words on a page and noticing that words are all around us. What that little girl in kindergarten wasn't aware of, you know, how to hold a book. Phonological awareness is playing with the sounds and words and the ability to hear the sounds that make up words. Letter knowledge is knowing the difference between how letters look, their names and sounds. And finally narrative skills is the ability to tell stories and describe things and sequences of events. So by sharing this information with parents we want to out validate and reinforce things they already know are important but may not know why or realize the impact they're having on their children's future learning. Five ways children learn those literacy skills include talking, reading, listening, playing and singing. But guest speakers during our podcasts will share information not only on the targeted early literacy skill but the multiple ways children learn that skill. This will help emphasize to parents the importance of talking, singing and reading to their child again before they're even born and how important playing is to a child's development. All of this information will enable the parents to feel more confident in their role as a child's first teacher and affirm that some of those instinctive things like talking to their newborn is exactly what they should and continue doing. After each story time at the library we're going to have an early literacy handout specific to the skill we were speaking on. And two years ago I was at the ARSL conference which is the American Role and Small Library Conference. There was a session entitled Routes to Reading Early Literacy Models at Work and Role Libraries. And at this session the presenters had an Idaho's Read to Me resource handout describing free resources that are available to anyone. One of those resources is the six skills activity sheets which are take home activity sheets reinforcing a specific early literacy skill. They are free for all libraries to use and so we were going to use them and I put up here just for your reference the print motivation one. Since we transition to the podcast format we will probably make these available from our website so parents can download them at home. This is an excellent example of how libraries share their thoughts and ideas with each other. There's no need to start from scratch every time and hopefully you've begun thinking of ways that you can incorporate this message of room literacy into your library setting. Read to the Bump is the third program under our room literacy initiative and is dependent on funding. It was the original program that I had thought of when I was developing this concept and after I had my aha moment at that conference I set about trying to figure out when would be the optimal time to begin reading to your child. Giving the expecting family some time to develop their reading routines yet before they were actually holding their newborn in their arms and their daily routines at least for a while were thrown out the window. So that leaves our timeframe defined somewhere between the moment of conception to somewhere during labor and delivery both of which seem like equally awkward options and you know the parents are kind of busy. That leaves me then sometime during the actual pregnancies months one through nine. Upon further thinking and some research I found out that around six months into the pregnancy babies develop the ability to hear outside the womb. So I thought this would be a good starting point to distribute those books. The parents have hopefully adjusted to the pregnancy gotten through that first trimester and so would have time before the child was born to develop some reading routines. Thinking back to my trips to the pediatrician for those wall baby checkups and some of the stories I shared with you how chaotic some of them might have been if we can get those board books into the parents hands earlier and start emphasizing early literacy skills during their prenatal checkups with their OBGYNs they'd have more time and hopefully be more successful at starting a reading routine that they would then be more likely to stick with after their child was born. If we could start this at their six month prenatal checkup and continue through their ninth month we'd be able to get four books to the expecting family and in the home while the child would start building their own personal library before they're even born. There's a number of benefits for the expecting family including the bonding that will occur between the mother and her baby between the spouse partner significant other and their unborn child and if the family already has children between them and their sibling to be. If the family can begin developing daily reading routines and foster love of reading with their child before they're born and if there's already children in the household this is an excellent time for them to practice their literacy skills as well. There's also health benefits for the mom and baby when the mom can take some time to relax and rest while she or someone else is reading to her bump. Listed here are some possible titles for the read to bump giveaways. The concept for the um you're probably all familiar with good night moon guess how much I love you braumber braumber what do you see the last book listed here below my little one it's me your father is um has the concept of exactly what I'm trying to achieve but it's geared toward the expecting father's viewpoint the background on this is we had a local tv news station come out and do a story on our womb literacy and after that aired I was contacted by an elven freightess who saw the news story he is the founder of magenta which is a global movement inspire and expectant fathers to read to the womb. His mission is to change the world by making the act of an expectant father consistently reading aloud to his children from the womb not just a good idea but an instinct and so to strengthen the movement he wrote a poem for expectant fathers to read to their child in the womb. He was excited to see a library working with this concept and contacted me because he wanted to compare notes. So this next year I'm going to be focusing on the read to the bump program I'm going to be and have been researching and applying for grants looking for partnerships with local organizations like our rotary optimist clubs who might be able to provide funding. We want to contact a few of our vendors who are at the baby fair to see if they were willing to support this initiative either with funding of books or being a site to distribute books to their expecting families. Our local OBGYN OBGYN office has agreed to be a site for us so excited for that and now in the process again of securing funding for that I did recently receive a mini grant which we were able to purchase some board books and we're going to start hopefully in May at our local food pantry. They have agreed to partner with us and we want to start distributing books to patrons that frequent the local food pantry. So depending on what our funding stream looks like we may need to adjust our expectations perhaps start which is giving one book to each expecting parent. I mean it'd be awesome to be able to do nine books you know all throughout their pregnancy so you know that ultimately is our goal but for now we'll hopefully grow it to at least four books as our finances allow. Since since we're encouraging expecting families to get to the routine of coming to the library beforehand we want to make sure we have a welcoming area for them when they visit after their child has arrived. So currently we have a small play area and the children's section of our library and we're looking at remodeling that to make it more baby friendly. We want to some of you may be familiar like with those early literacy panels that are hung on the wall for toddlers and kids to use we want to get some baby ones maybe one that like has a mirror on it so we put it at like floor level where babies are at. We also are looking at some more appropriate seating for nursing moms a rocking chair something like that we're going to be revamping our board collection. So we're going to be looking at funding and planning for this as well. I put the water walk on there for you that is an option I thought of that need I need to develop further and that would be a fundraiser that would include family oriented activities while we be raising money to purchase board books for our read to the bump. So hopefully while listening to me you've been thinking about how you might be able to start a womb literacy initiative at your library and if this is something that your community would benefit from. Even though each of our communities are unique children starting school and not being prepared to learn as a common problem across the United States. So I urge each of you to seriously consider how your library can continue to be a part of the solution. Starting new programs can be overwhelming if you're a one person library are short on funding staff time you know or insert any of the numerous hurdles we all face at our libraries on a daily basis. Many of these reasons are why it took so long for me to get this initiative out of my head and actually into the library. I've worked at a small world library a large library and now I'm at a medium sized library so I understand and have experienced many of the obstacles you're all thinking of right now. But I think this is a concept library should be involved in and offering a womb literacy program can only can help make a difference in the lives of our youngest patrons. I've tried to give you not only the basics of what this concept entails but some specifics too to help you so you are not starting from scratch. You don't have to implement all three programs at once. Perhaps start with one of them like baby fare. Think about your communities. Do you see pregnant moms in your library around town? It seems once you start looking for them they're everywhere. Where are those moms going to have their babies even if you don't have a hospital right in your town? You probably have doulas or a county or regional hospital system. They're going somewhere to have those babies so reach out and ask those organizations if they'd be willing to come to the library and participate in a baby fare. We wanted to start out really small with our baby fare and it just kind of kept growing but even just having a couple of vendors on an afternoon for the public is a start. What kind of support groups or nonprofits are in your area? We usually welcome an opportunity to get their information out to the public. As I kept researching and found more and more nonprofits they were all excited and willing to participate. Since I didn't charge the vendors any money the price was low and because many of them were nonprofits they had the same budget concerns we do. I really wanted the focus to be on resource sharing and not profit making. The only cost of the vendors was a couple of hours of their time in exchange for them being able to connect with the community. Every single one of the vendors were happy with how the fare turned out. One local non-profit of the fare told me that they had just spoken to an attendee who called their organization two days earlier needing assistance. The attendee was glad to be able to put a face to the name of the person she was working with. So we are making a difference. Reaching out to community organizations and start forming some partnerships. Do you have local or county police or firemen who might be able to volunteer during the fare to do a car seat safety check? Is there a swimming pool or YMCA in town who might be willing to come share information on baby CPR and choking? All of this information for new and expecting parents that they should know and providing them with those resources you're demonstrating to the community just how vital of a link the library is and the impact we have on people's lives. For the story times you might already be doing as many story times as you feel you can and don't see how you can possibly add another one much less one that's given once a month for nine months. Totally understandable I get it but perhaps you can scale it down and offer three programs over a nine month period. So it'd be one story time each trimester if we were keeping with the pregnancy lingo and if you feel that's still too much perhaps you can rotate those three story times with other libraries near you join forces and offer joint programming together with each library hosting just one program each. Perhaps you decide you're not able to add a story time but maybe you can take a few minutes during the first story time of each month you're doing you're already doing and talk about an early literacy skill or the importance of establishing literacy habits and reading to the child before they're born. Maybe you can offer a meeting room space or somewhere in your library if you don't have meeting rooms and begin a social time for expecting parents to gather so they can start developing those networks of support. Our own resources will maybe able you to save time by not having to recreate everything from scratch. This is one thing I absolutely love about libraries our willingness to share resources information and knowledge with each other. We all know how valuable time is especially in smaller libraries. Maybe you decide you just have time to make copies of those literacy flyers from the Idaho commission for libraries that I showed you and maybe you have them available for the public on a counter. Using those saved me many hours of creating an informational flyer on my own. There are a lot of to scale this program depending on the needs of your community and the parameters your library is working with. Start small and grow as time, funding and staffing permit. So in conclusion, thank you for listening to me today. Here's my contact information. Please feel free to keep in touch and let me know if your library decides to start offering room literacy programming. I'd love to hear how you've adapted it to your communities your successes and setbacks and what feedback you're getting from your community. My hope is we can continue sharing ideas and developing this concept of bin libraries regardless of their size or location. I think we have a few minutes left now so I'd be happy if anyone has any questions or comments. Sure. Yes. Yes, we do. Thank you very much Jennifer. That was that was great. If anybody does have any questions, yes, please do type them into the question section of your GoToWebinar interface. Let us know if you have any questions about anything Jennifer talked about or if you've done anything like this at your library. I'd love to hear about that definitely. This is very interesting. My first impression of it is you kind of covered everything. All the possible ways people could do this and all the different programs you did. To have you heard of anyone that's actually I was wondering have you heard of anybody else doing this kind of programming yet this before they're born type stuff? Good question, Krista. Thank you. I've not actually heard of any libraries doing this so we're kind of breaking new ground here and this is not my main focus being the assistant director. There's many hats I wear as well and I truly do get it. As I said, I was the director of a small library of less than 2,000 people for seven years. So I get time as precious commodity. I just truly feel this is such an important initiative that for the future of our children and how we as libraries can play a role in that solution. I've done a lot of research out there. There was one scientific paper that talked about womb literacy and I don't have the correct information with me right now to reference back to it but what they were doing was when the babies were already born in the NICU they did a study and the babies would suck faster on their pacifier if they recognized the story that was being read to them and so that which was very cool and I have pages and pages of research to read when I get to them and stuff but I've not heard or talked with any other libraries who are currently doing this. When I had my first two boys I could take them to the regular story time, the preschool story time but it wasn't until after my third child was born that five, six, seven years ago that we started as libraries offering that baby story time and so I think that's why I kind of did that literacy timeline at the beginning was just to kind of get people thinking like where have we been and where are we now where can we go and I really think this is something that in any capacity you know even if it's just copying from the website one of those literacy skills and you may not have a pregnant mom at your story time but maybe you have a grandma or everybody knows someone who's pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant and I think that's part of just since this is such a new concept is wrapping people's heads around you know that any little thing you can do is something good and will help children get off to a better start but we currently don't know of any other libraries out there and I'd love to have some other ones out there with me working through this yeah I'm hoping we can get this you know this concept out there to more people who you know to get more of people coming up with this program as well yeah hopefully they'll watch this show and get started with it we have one comment from one library says that they've done a story time with kids who can't read and they read the stories by looking at the pictures great that's a great idea yes and I think that's you know it's that's why we wanted to focus on the expecting parent because they've already got so much on their plate with you know trying to learn all that they can to get baby off to a good start and if we can just you know the American Academy of Pediatrics says it's from day one it's important to start reading to your baby and it is but you know I don't think I was uncommon in my thoughts and experiences as a new parent it's just so hard to work it into your schedule if you're not already in that habit so you know if we can help them and parents don't know they don't realize that it's important to read to kids when they can't read or they can't talk yet and they don't know how important it is that it's okay if you just look at a picture book with no words and just make up the story so it's kind of those little nuggets of information that we're all aware of in the library world that you know we can start getting out to the community you know as I said when I had my first two boys I wasn't a librarian and I knew it was important but you know it was just easy to put off so that's great that they're doing that sort of story time yeah it's something yeah it's true being in the library world and involved in that all the time most of my friends and family who I see who have kids they're always posting pictures of their little their toddlers one two-year-olds just flipping through the books they have in their bedroom of course they can't read but they're doing it because somebody has shown them how like you said that one girl didn't even know how to use a book we are maybe thinking well everybody knows that not necessarily you know just because you think it's common knowledge that this is a good thing and that of course you give kids books not everybody out there obviously knows that exactly and so and I don't want this to be overwhelming I you know the parents already have again enough that they're thinking of and stuff so I don't want to overwhelm them but that's what I thought with this podcast is so great they can listen and re-listen to it and it benefits one little nugget of you know that they can start doing in a slight adjustment to their schedule five minutes here you know isn't a lot of time if you can start working on it before they come because there's more time before than after yeah and I know people do know I mean I hope most people know but babies can hear people play music for them when they're still in the womb and you do notice when certain songs are played they get more excited or calm down and certain voices they recognize I had a co-worker who was pregnant and she said I think my boy knows who you are because when you're talking and telling me something he gets calm and kind of sits and listens and it's you know he she he could tell the difference between different people and he was still in the womb I mean exactly there's new research out there every day how much those those babies are learning and absorbing before they join us and you know I look forward to when we can start collecting some of those stories about how you know I was reading the choo choo train book and I went choo choo and you know the baby kicked you know afterwards you know they realize the baby recognizes it and kind of just different little things with marketing stuff I want people to start thinking as important as packing your baby bag you know to take to the library or to take to the hospital make sure you throw your baby's favorite book in there too so you can read to them when they're at the hospital you know so just kind of different little public service announcements or things like that that get people thinking like you know they're with us before and they're absorbing and they know the the dog barking you know that's why they don't wake up after you know they're at home because they already know the dog barks since they were used to it yes exactly so you know hopefully this will give you guys some food for thought I try to be a little more detailed because I know what it's like trying to create from scratch and you know please feel free to utilize this in any way that you can at your library and use my contact information to stay in touch and I might be happy to chat yeah definitely oh great thank you oh we just have one comment someone says that he says I read to the womb when my wife was pregnant and both our kids became readers and storytellers very creative kids and that's that story libraries need to tell our library story and sometimes you know that again gets pushed to the side too but you know if that comment put that out there and let people know that that you know you think that really helped them you know it wasn't a struggle to start and even now with my voice sometimes it's like yes sit down and read you know it needs to be that loving bonding time with them and not a struggle and if it's what they know from growing up from before day one it's what they know absolutely all right well it looks like we don't have any other urgent questions coming through so I think since we are almost at the top of the hour we'll wrap it up for today thank you very much Jennifer like I said this is very informative and very useful and I'm thinking with all the details you're given especially we get the recording out there a lot more people will libraries will hopefully get connected with it and start their own programs in this way great wonderful thank you everyone and thanks Christa great thank you and thank you everyone for attending I'm going to pull back the control to my screen here now there we go all right so that does wrap it up for this week's edition of Encompass Live we are recording and has been recorded and it'll be posted on our website this is our main Encompass Live site where we have all of our upcoming shows but our archives are right here this link right below all the upcoming shows where we have our recordings will be here and it will be listed just like this one the recording will be here the slides will be here and links to any of the websites that Jennifer mentioned I was capturing them in our delicious account as she was talking and they'll be available available to you as well so that'll be up hopefully later this afternoon depends just on how long it all takes so I hope you enjoy this for any of our upcoming shows our schedule is right here on the website we're always adding new ones you see we've got some already going on into May so do take a look at what we've got coming up and sign up if you are a big Facebook user we are also on Facebook so go ahead and like us over there and hopefully I'll get loaded up here there we go I do post when new shows are on here this I've got a reminder to log in for today's show when our recordings are available I post on here as well so if you're big on you've done Facebook and want to get notified of what's going on on Encompass Live give us a like over there other than that that wraps it up for this week's show thank you very much and we'll see you next time on Encompass Live all right bye bye