Dare to explore: keeping Auckland's children reading and learning over summer.

• Author: Morgan, Greg
• Position: Auckland, New Zealand - Report

Dare to explore is the Auckland Libraries summer reading adventure aimed at keeping 5-13 year olds reading and learning over the summer holidays. The program launched in December 2011, featuring six different challenges and reading adventure themes. Over 6000 children took part in the adventure in its first year. Developing this region wide program within the recently amalgamated Auckland required new thinking to achieve user centric design and a whole of staff focus for delivery. Verbatim feedback from parents and teachers indicated that sustained library engagement made a positive impact on reading fluency. Other measures of success included increased website visits and high page view rankings. As a result of the program, 600 children joined the library as personal members. What was learned from the first year is now informing the refresh of the program and the evaluation methodology for year two. Edited version of a paper presented at the conference 'Learning for all: public libraries in Australia and New Zealand Melbourne 13-14 September'.

**********

Over the summer school holidays December 2011-January 2012, Auckland Libraries offered the children of Auckland the opportunity to participate in Dare to explore--a brand new summer reading adventure organised regionally now that eight local authorities had been merged to create the new Auckland. Developing a region wide program entailed a shift away from the previous approaches to encouraging children to keep reading and learning over their long holiday. Putting user experience at the centre of the program design enabled that mindset change. Dare to explore was conceived as a flagship program to run for three years, with a refresh in years two and three and a complete rethink after that.

The context of one city

Auckland Libraries came into existence on 1 November 2010, created from the integration of seven public library systems when the New Zealand government amalgamated eight local authorities into one Auckland council. Auckland's population has just reached 1.5 million and is very diverse. (1) It is home to the country's largest populations of Maori (137,133 in 2006) and of Pacific peoples (177,933 in 2006); at the last census there were 268,600 people of Asian origin. The median age is 34 (younger than the median age of New Zealand: 36). The 2006 census counted 288,573 children aged up to 14 years and 198,477 young people aged 15 to 24 years. On 2006 figures, one third of the children in New Zealand live in Auckland; people under 25 years of age make up almost 40% of the population. In June 2011, Statistics New Zealand estimated that the number of children and young people in Auckland had increased by over 25,000 since 2006.

In establishing the new Auckland, the New Zealand government legislated for the development of a long term 30 year strategic direction for it. The Auckland plan adopted by the council on 29 March 2012 is a strategy for how Auckland will become 'the world's most liveable city'.

It is important to note that the plan is not simply a council work list: its scope incorporates wide collaboration with central government, the private sector and community stakeholders. Plan directives have implications for how multisector stakeholders will, among other priorities, collaborate to 'put children and young people first'. The first of the transformational shifts identified is 'Dramatically accelerate the prospects of Auckland's children and young people'. From the very beginning of the consultation on the intended plan, it was apparent that the Auckland plan would give children and young people prominence in the agenda of the new city. (2)

One library network

Thanks to the experience of working together regionally for a number of years, the public libraries which merged to form Auckland Libraries were able to deliver a first day coup--anyone with a library card issued by any public library in the region could borrow anywhere, return anywhere at any of the 55 libraries and 4 mobile libraries that now opened their doors as Auckland Libraries. Following day one, the focus over the period of the long school holiday in December 2010-January 2011 was to provide continuity of service for users.

We did not in those early months try to create a single summer reading program--libraries that had previously delivered a local or wider area program continued to do so. However, staff did collect user feedback on those existing programs, and gave their own, to inform the planning of a region wide summer reading program for December 2011-January 2012. Initiating this was already on the work plan of the new service development unit.

One city--one library network: what would one summer reading adventure look like?

The youth service development team used a gathering of children's librarians in March 2011 to generate interest in the idea of a single summer reading program and there were follow up visits to children's services team meetings to elicit wide staff input to thinking how such a program could look. We then engaged an external facilitator to deliver a two day workshop focused on agreeing a vision for program outcomes and an action plan for the design of an Auckland Libraries summer reading adventure with the user experience at the centre.

In contemplating the outcomes for Dare to explore, staff had to be mindful of the feedback on the previous programs but not be bound by the thinking that had created them. All the earlier programs had been designed to address summer learning and reading loss as described by Barbara Heyns and others, but in some cases capped participant numbers in order to target children known to have reading difficulties and/or so that the program was deliverable within the resourcing available. The potential of a new program to deliver reading outcomes for children at any reading level and to increase the engagement of children and families with libraries across Auckland led us to decide that numbers should not be capped. This would mean asking staff other than children's librarians to play a part in delivering the reading adventure. Programs offered in New Zealand and overseas provided ideas, and within our own organisation we drew upon synergies between summer holiday programming and other inhouse initiatives that focused on delivering a consistently great user experience.

The facilitated workshop developed these desired outcomes for the program

* children have fun, enjoy the program and find it easy and flexible

* children increase their love of books, reading and the library

*...