Case Study: Summer Reading

It was a small advertisement that led to big changes in the way Prince William Public Library System (Virginia) managed the 3,600 plus teens in its summer reading program.

Thousands of Summer Reading Participants – One Easy Solution

While flipping through a library periodical, Cathy Chang, Associate Director of Prince William Public Library System, saw an advertisement for Summer Reader – the web based summer reading management software from Evanced Solutions. After emailing Evanced and later attending a webinar, Cathy purchased a software subscription for her library system and her summer reading program took a new and improved course.

“We tried to create our own software program [in-house],” Cathy explained, “but it was clunky and staff intensive.”

The staff intensive nature of their former in-house program made it difficult for library staff to manage reader participation and extract statistics about their program. Using Summer Reader’s management tools, including patron self-registration, book and events reviews, prize drawings, and quick report generation, Cathy and her staff were able to respond to reader participation more quickly, and the easy-to-use patron interface increased teen participation – both day and night.

A Teen Friendly Summer Reading Site

“When the kids saw Summer Reader and its tools, they embraced them right away. The teens love being able to log in, it’s available 24 hours a day, and they can pick up their prizes at anytime because we enabled the prize features in the website”, said Cathy.

Teens quickly gravitated to the review feature and in the first year of using the product, the library had over 3,000 book reviews. “We thought that with Facebook and Twitter and all these other things, [the teens] would abandon reviews, but they didn’t. They love to write reviews and it’s nice because we know that the kids are writing and participating in a safe environment. The staff can easily review what they write and we can make a note that says “Spoiler Alert” if they tell a lot about a particular book and might spoil the end for other readers,” added Cathy.

6th-12th graders from the Prince William Library System write reviews of various detail and length. The newest version of Summer Reader 2009 allows readers to add titles to a reading list if a book review piques their interest.

A Staff Time-Saving Solution

Saving time and money was an unexpected but positive feature of using Summer Reader. . “The staff wanted to save time,” Cathy explained, “Especially with this economy; we need to save staff time and Summer Reader helps us with that.”

The ability to create statistical reports quickly and easily has been a big help to the Prince William Public Library System. By running reports such as the book review report, library staff can easily obtain a list of the titles participants are reading to determine whether their purchases and collection development policy are matching reading trends. This feature decreased the amount of time the staff was taking to sort reviews and view reading trends.

Libraries and Schools Team Up

Summer Reader’s features don’t just help the library, they help community schools too. Local schools have asked the library staff to help them track summer reading statistics so their middle schools students can “compete to read” over summer break. And high school teachers are allowing students to print out their book reviews from Summer Reader and submit them for book report credit.

It was this review feature that demonstrated to the Prince William Public Library System just how responsive Evanced Solutions customer service is. When students asked if they could search for the book review they wrote by first name or title, Cathy called the Evanced Solutions support team. “We asked if that was a possible feature and the programmers came back and created it,” Cathy said, “Now it’s a standard feature of the software. It’s nice to see a company that’s responsive to suggestions for developments”.

Marketing and Design for Summer Reading Success

Cathy credits high participation in the summer reading program to the software, but also to the marketing of their program and the design of their Summer Reader webpage. Cathy and her staff used direct links from the library homepage to the Summer Reader site and additional links in the library’s email newsletter to increase teen participation. Making special outreach visits to schools to demonstrate the software and working closely with media center specialists also helps their program grow every year. By collaborating with the local government television channel, the library has been able to create “shows” that tell the community more about their summer reading program and events. And most importantly, the layout of their site is filled with fun graphics and vivid colors to ensure that it is inviting to teens. “If we don’t used bright colors or if the Summer Reader colors we choose are dull, the teens make sure they let us know!” laughed Cathy.

The Prince William Public Library System Summer Reader site will be available and ready to view in May 2009. Visit their site. Below is another great example from the Loudon County Library (Virginia) highlighting the use of color and theme in Summer Reader design.

Reaching Out to a Variety of Readers

While Prince William Library has focused on using the Summer Reader product for teens, other libraries across the United States (and now even across the world) create a variety of pages for different age ranges and needs. With the software, children, teen, and adult reading programs can be run independently of one another. Libraries also use the software to manage interest groups and to manage and promote other reading programs such as winter reading, Teen Read Week, etc.

View the Prince William Summer Reader Site

A Look at Other Summer Reader Sites

View Google slideshow of Summer Reader examples.

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Learn More about Summer Reader

If you’d like to learn more about Summer Reader and other Evanced Solutions products, contact Evanced at sales@evancedsolutions.com. Sign up for a free (and pressure-free) webinar by visiting us online at http://www.evanced.info/lyp.