Literature Review Paper: Public Libraries and Book Clubs Kimberly DeRosa LIS 4000 Literature Review Paper Public Libraries and Book Clubs November 7 2013
In the last decade or so, there has been a resurgence of book clubs in libraries. These new book clubs have taken on a different dimension to ones of the past. The stereotype of old women sitting around knitting and discussing an Agatha Christie novel (Starkey, 2005) no longer represents an image of what a book club is. Different libraries are creating different types of book clubs across the country; with their own budgets or with donations. Book clubs are engaging people from children to seniors, each in a possibly different way. With the resurgence of book clubs, libraries can hopefully see an increase in their patrons and circulation, thus increasing their presence in the community. Libraries are using many different models for book clubs including to-go kits, inviting authors to book discussions, online discussions, the One City, One Book campaign, and even breakfast book clubs. Creating a larger interest in book clubs includes the goal of having larger groups for participation. The article Libraries Offer Chapter and Verse on Citywide Book Clubs by Michael Rogers discusses creating a larger interest in book clubs in different cities. One great example of this is the Seattle Public library launching its citywide book club in 1998 (Rogers, 2002). This plan included the library district choosing one book for all the city branches to use as their book for discussion. There were no additional or different choices in literature for different public library branches to offer to their patrons for this club. The Seattle Public library chose The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks. Other cities looked to this model and expanded their own book clubs to emulate. These cities include Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, and Syracuse (Rogers 2002). Each of the cities borrowed the model from Washington, but they each went about implementing their plan in different ways taking different lengths of time. For example, the Chicago Public Library took a short amount of time to get their program rolling. Starting in April of 2001, the Chicago Public Library was able to plan, organize, get 2
copies of the book selection, and work with local community partners to announce the book in mid-august of the same year will be discussed in October of 2001 (Rogers, 2002). Their route to announcement was a lot quicker than other libraries. The Seattle Public Library took over a year to plan and organize the launch of their first book club read, which included bringing the author of the book in for the discussion (Rogers, 2002). Although both library systems took different amounts of time to set their program in place, both book club programs were successful for both the libraries. This is an example of the public looking for a program like a book club to participate in. The opportunities were put out to both patrons and non-patrons to be included in the book club with a great response. To offer more than just reading the selected books for both programs, the public libraries put together guides for their patrons. The guide for the Chicago Public Library included ten discussion questions, the background of the novel, a historic time line, and a bibliography of related titles. (Rogers, 2002, p.16). The Seattle Public Library s put together reading group toolboxes that include questions, an author biography and interview, and suggested readings. (Rogers, 2002, p.16). By offering additional resources for the book clubs, there is more incentive for people to take part in these groups. To meet some of the challenges libraries face in gaining increased involvement in book clubs, some have created book club kits to go. These kits can include a number of items to increase interest in the club. Virginia Hermes, Mary Anne Hile, and Johnetta L. Frisbie put together book club kits to go and discuss this in the article Reviving Literature Discussion: Book Club to Go Kits. A great example of book club to go kits is in the Johnson County Public Library system in Kansas. 3
This public library system created the book club to go kits with as many different types of patrons in mind as possible. They ve chosen this accommodation technique to include as many of their patrons as possible to take part in a book club. For books to be in a tool kit, Hermes, Hile, and Frisbie (2008) indicate they must meet the following requirements: Kit titles had to be also available in the library in audio and large print formats, even though regular print is included in the bags. Kit titles must have discussion questions available, either in the book or on a website. Kit titles must be compatible with JCL s collection and programming in appealing to target audiences. Kit titles must be available in paperback format. (p. 31-32) These requirements can limit the choices of books to create the to go kits, but it does allow for a larger or more diverse amount of people to partake in the book club discussions. Large print books allow for people with bad eyesight or seniors to actively engage in their book club. Some people are more interested in listening to the audio recording of the book while they accomplish other tasks instead of reading the book themselves. These people can now also participate in book clubs where they might not have been interested before. By having 149 book club to go kits, the Johnson County Public Library hopes to destroy the barrier money needed to take part in book clubs for all people (Hermes, Hile, & Frisbie, 2008). Librarians are also looking for ways to reach out to teens to join book clubs. A great way to accomplish this goal was done by the Berkeley Public Library. Talking Comics: Starting Your Graphic Novel Book Club by Jack Baur and Jessica Lee describes how the Berkeley Public Library capitalized on a specific genre interest from one of their staff members and a growing 4
popularity trend amongst teens. The Comix Club, a graphic novel discussion group, meets at a middle school for their discussions (Baur, & Lee, 2012). This comic group allows for teens to meet weekly discussing comics and graphic novels they spend their free time on. The librarians found this type of book club increases a diversity of teens wanting to be a part of it. Some of these teens are students with dyslexia, reluctant readers, new English speakers, and children on the autism spectrum, as well as highly gifted students (Baur, J., & Lee, J., 2012, 17). The content of the club can allow for a wider array of teens to actively participate and enjoy what they are reading. Graphic novels appeal to the wider audience of teenagers who have at this middle school the opportunity to meet as a group and discuss different aspects of the novel. One might think there can not be an engaging discussion about graphic novels. The librarians at the Berkeley Public Library put together detailed questions for the student to talk about. In their discussion guide, they include a synopsis, themes, and content advisory of the comic in addition to several discussion questions. An example of this can be seen from Baur and Lee (2012) their reading of All-Star Superman, Vol. 1: 1. Look at the first three pages of the story. What do these three pages tell you about Superman? 2. When Superman tries to tell Lois that he is Clark Kent, she doesn t believe him. On page 49, she says, What if there really was some part of him that was bumbling, oafish Clark Kent? I just don t know if I could live with that. Why does Lois have a hard time with the idea of Clark being Superman? 3. Why does Lex Luthor hate Superman? Why does he like Clark Kent? How is it different from how Lois Lane feels? 5
4. Based on the last story in the book, what conclusions can you come to about Superman s humanity? Does either Lois or Lex see the real Superman? (p. 19) These types of questions can spark lively discussions between the teens who read the comic. A great concern for libraries is the funding needed to actually put on these types of programming. For the Berkeley Public Library, they used donations to build their collection of graphic novels and comics to continue their popular Comix Club. Specifically, DonorsChoose.org, which helped get the club ten copies each of fifteen different graphic novels (Baur, & Lee, 2012). Another great example of libraries involving children and teens (or tweens, as some know them as) in their book club programs is offering a Saturday morning book club for them and their caregivers participate in discussion, breakfast, and arts and crafts. This program was implemented by the St. Tammany Parish Library in Louisiana, which gets kids to be more involved beyond just reading books. Through the program, the Becnel (2006) has seen increasing levels of engagement and creativity that the children demonstrate and their parents! (p. 27). The different types of activities the children and parents create after their discussion and breakfast help bring them into the library for the book club. The increased interest keeps the book club alive and continuous. Some patrons are more interested in participating in book clubs through libraries online. This can be seen with the new advances in technology and how libraries are including these new technologies into their programs. Blogs are a great way to reach those users that might prefer to engage with their community anonymously instead of face to face. The article entitled Online Book-Clubbing Made Easy by Neal Starkey goes into detail on how the Tippecanoe County Public Library in Indiana is successfully utilizing an online book club. 6
The Tippecanoe County Public Library selects one book each month and people write about their thoughts through the online discussion list (Starkey, N. 2005). This is a great resource for many people, being flexible for patrons to respond at anytime and perhaps feel safer by commenting anonymously. People that normally do not participate in book clubs may participate in an online book club community. There are a few downsides to having an online book club discussion. The downsides Starkey (2005) includes: Communication is harder without faces. It is easy to be misunderstood online. Communications are slower Questions and responses can take over a day to be exchanged, which sometimes leads to a shallower discussion of the book than you might be able to get in a traditional club. (p. 50) These negatives can deter patrons from utilizing the program. One way to combat this could be to have a set time for a live chat discussion online so the discussion remains engaging and continuous over a short period of time instead of the longer period of a month. This may entice that group of people who do not want to wait for someone to respond to the thread. The online forum many libraries use for children and teen to participate in online book clubs called Moodle is described in Cassandra Scharber s article Online Book Clubs: Bridges Between Old and New Literacies Practices. This online environment, which parental approval, allows children and teens to participate in library book clubs online and have live online chats with other children and a library moderator in a safe environment. The clubs described in the article lasted for one week and after the participants read the book prior to that particular week, the librarian posted a greeting and new question in the forum, allowing the members to respond to the question and read other responses at anytime (Scharber, 2009). After the week, there was 7
a designated time for a live chat between the members of the forum. This is an aspect of the online book club that the children liked the most. The chats tended to be social in nature, with conversations revolving around pets, sports, and other good books Scharber (2009) indicates. (p. 435) The librarian facilitated the chats, but this environment allows for children to safely partake in online chats that would normally be ruled out. A great aspect to this is that the library is providing that safe space; this can increase the patronage of families utilizing its resources for more than just an online book club and forum. An interesting article discussing who uses summer reading book clubs at libraries was written by Laura M. Justice, Shayne B. Piasta, Janet L. Capps, Stephanie R. Levitt, and the Columbus Metropolitan Library entitled Library-Based Summer Reading Clubs: Who Participates and Why?. In this article, a research study was performed on children and youth who participate in five different branches of the Columbus Metropolitan Library s summer reading clubs. This program is a no-cost voluntary eight-week self-reported reading program in which participants register online and record each hour of reading they complete, allowing for prizes after completing so many hours (Justice, Piasta, Capps, Levitt, & Columbus Metropolitan Library, 2013). To collect the data on what kinds of children and youth were participating in the program, the study had guardians of children seven and younger fill out the questionnaire and youth eight to seventeen filled out the survey themselves. The researchers asked about demographics, home environment, and motivation. Some of the questions focused on age, gender, race/ethnicity, caregiver educational attainment, home language, perceived reading competencies, parental involvement, home atmosphere, literacy environment in homes, why students signed up, and what kind of external or internal interest do they have in joining the club (Justice et al, 2013). The results of the study can help not only the Columbus Metropolitan 8
Library, but can be used for other library systems to look at and perform their own study to compare findings on youth summer reading clubs. In this study, the findings suggest children and youth who participate in summer reading clubs tend to like reading (or being read to), value the effort needed to become advanced readers, hold a belief that reading is important, and tend to reside in homes where their guardian has high expectations for their future and believe getting ahead in life is always important (Justice, L. M., Piasta, S. B., Capps, J. L., Levitt, S. R., & Columbus Metropolitan Library, 2013). These results can be telling on what types of children and youth are participating in public libraries summer reading clubs and how to engage with them to get them to participate. Libraries can use the data to see they can branch out in other ways to children and guardians who might not be interested in reading or being read to, or believe they are proficient in reading. Book clubs are interacting with patrons and bringing more to the table in a way that might not have been done before. In the article THE BOOK CLUB EXPLODED BY Barbara Hoffert, many additional ideas are discussed on how to interest people in book clubs. The monthly book club at the East Palestine Memorial Public Library in Ohio sometimes reads the same book, or books from the same genre, or just books from the same subject (Hoffert 2006). This idea can bring many different types of books to the table, and also doesn t require everyone who participates to find the same book which can be hard if one branch of the library only holds so many copies. The diversity in the genres, subjects, and books also can lead to a diverse population of participants in the book club. More men might partake in one book club month, whereas more families might be interested in another. These types of book clubs allow for a thematic discussion. Working with a certain theme Hoffert (2006) indicates can enrich the conversation by allowing readers to cross genres and 9
approach the discussion from different perspectives (p. 35). With these types of discussions, patrons can be more engaged and feel more likely to participate in the next month s book club discussion. The possibility of discussion ideas continues to grow. Another type of book club libraries could promote to their patrons is an audio book club. In the article Promoting reading using this 2.0 Stuff by Stephen Abram, he asks if libraries have created audio book clubs. To create an audiobook club, libraries can license a single audiobook for participants that they can discuss online on a blog, but an alternative to purchasing a license is looking up podcasts or free audiobooks on the web for a discussion (Abram, 2008). As stated earlier in this paper, many people are interested in listening to a book then reading one. There could be many reasons for this, but one could be the technologically changing world that is the present. Technology can help libraries successfully promote and encourage participation in book clubs of this new era. There are many more mediums and modes for libraries to utilize when encouraging book clubs. Many of these resources will lead to new ideas for book clubs in the future. Print books are still being utilized, while computers and technology are driving a new way to be a part of a libraries book club. Book to go kits encourage many people to join book clubs, as well as online blog discussions of a selected book. Children and teens are being encouraged to participate in book clubs through online means. Some book clubs post on a forum for a week to invite discussion and then end with the children participants chatting live with each other in a safe environment. Other clubs are choosing a specific genre and bringing it to students at their school. Blogging is becoming a useful tool in increasing participation in book clubs for some public libraries. Breakfast and activity book clubs bring parents and children together to discuss, create and engage in the library and a book club. Studies are being conducted to find out what 10
kinds of children and youth are attending book clubs. The results from these studies can help create ideas on how to reach out and encourage other types of children and youth to attend book clubs. All of these ideas push the presence of books clubs further into the public eye for many others to participate. Book clubs have shifted from a small group of people reading the same book and discussing whether they enjoyed the book or not to chatting live with the author about experiences that shaped and influenced the book. Even so, book clubs have been around for centuries. In An Unnoted Book Society (?) in Eighteenth-Century Derby in Notes and Queries by Arthur Sherbo, examples of book clubs resonate even from the eighteenth century. In this piece, Sherbo indicates the possibility of finding a sheet of paper in a published work from 1771 indicating a list of names of people who were part of a book group. The assortment of people includes a woman, a doctor, a captain, and a colonel (Sherbo, 1997). People coming together to discuss literature has a place in both the past and the future. Continuous evolution of the book club will maintain its survival for generations to come. References 11
Abram, S. (2008). Promoting reading using this 2.0 stuff. Multimedia & Internet@Schools, 15(5), 21-23. Baur, J., & Lee, J. (2012). Talking comics. Young Adult Library Services, 10(4), 17-21. Becnel, K. (2006). Picture books and pancakes: Breakfast book club gets tweens into reading. Children & Libraries: The Journal of the Association for Library Service to Children, 4(1), 26-27. Hermes, V., Hile, M., & Frisbie, J. L. (2008). Reviving literary discussion: Book club to go kits. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 48(1), 30-34. doi: 10.5860/rusq.48n1 Hoffert, B. (2006). THE BOOK CLUB EXPLODED. Library Journal, 131(12), 34-37. Justice, L. M., Piasta, S. B., Capps, Levitt, S. R., Columbus & Metropolitan Library. (2013). Library-based summer reading clubs: Who participates and why?. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 83(4), 321-340. doi: 10.1086/671911 Rogers, M. (2002). Libraries offer chapter and verse on citywide book clubs. Library Journal, 127(6), 16. Scharber, C. (2009). Online book clubs: Bridges between old and new literacies practices. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(5), 433-437. doi: 10.1598/JAAL.52.5.7 12
Sherbo, A. (1997). An unnoted book society (?) in eighteenth-century derby. Notes & Queries, 44(2), 212-213. doi:10.1093/nq/44.2.212 Starkey, N. (2005). Online book-clubbing made easy. American Libraries, 36(8), 50-51. Trott, B., & Goldberg, M. (2012). Extracurricular reading. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 51(3), 231-234. doi: 10.5860/rusq.51n3 13