Session 14: Program Proposal: Jeanne Andrews, BCPL The Towson Branch of BCPL would benefit from the

addition of a World Languages story time. This would target the Birth to Five audience and their family members. One component of the Baltimore County Public Library Mission Statement is to Champion an early and lifelong love of reading and story time programing for children is a key element to achieving this goal. Creating young readers and supporting early literacy is an important part of the librarys 20132015 Strategic Plan. The objective is to continue to have programs and services designed to ensure that they will enter school ready to learn to read, write and listen. A World Languages story time would not only promote both of these ideas, but would also reach out to members of the community who may not be regular library users. There are several community partners in the area that could be contacted to assist in not only making this program idea possible, but that could also provide an audience that would benefit and enjoy this unique programing opportunity. Towson University is only a few blocks from the library and in addition to boasting a strong early childhood education curriculum, also offers a multitude of foreign language majors and minors. By creating a partnership with the University, a foreign language story time could be performed on a regular basis, highlighting a different language each month. The librarian would work in tandem with a University student volunteer to present this program. The area high schools also have Honors Language clubs that could be contacted to assist with programming support also. Another key community partner would be the ESOL program at the Community College of Baltimore County. By working with this group, the library can reach out directly to the community of foreign language speakers and bring them into the building to share a story time with their children in their own language and English. This is a demographic of the public that may not ordinarily come into the branch, and exposes them to an educational program as well as the opportunity to get a library card and access to free books that they can take home to help improve their language skills. This program would follow an established story time outline of incorporating a greeting and closing song, with books interspersed with song and movement activities. The program would last a half hour and the librarian would facilitate while the volunteer would read a couple of childrens books in the featured language of the month. In addition to Spanish language books, BCPL also owns a Korean and Russian collection, however for stories written in Japanese, German, French, Portuguese and Italian, picture books could be purchased from the website Language Lizard or Amazon. Stories featuring word repetition, allow the children to learn new vocabulary while participating along with the reader. Some research by the librarian can provide cultural information regarding the featured country to supplement the educational component of the program. World Languages would be scheduled on a Saturday morning at 10:30. Currently the Towson branch hosts a Bilingual story time featuring Spanish twice a month during this time frame. The popularity of this program has grown since its creation and World Languages is a natural fit for this slot on off weeks. A World Languages story time allows for enrichment to typical story time participants as well as making the library a desired destination for foreign language speakers. The success would be measured not only by the size of the audience but in its ability to attract a new customer base of native language speakers.

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WORLD LANGUAGES STORYTIME AT THE TOWSON BRANCH The Towson Branch of the Baltimore County Public Library will be launching a new storytime starting next month. Preschool children have a long history of enjoying the entertaining storytimes provided by BCPL and now the Towson branch will be taking emergent literacy a step further by introducing a World Languages storytime. Each month a different foreign language will be featured in story and songs for the enjoyment of the birth to five audience and their families. This program is intended to expose English speaking children and their family to a different featured foreign language each month, as well as encourage the participation from members of the community that are not primary English speakers. The creation of this World Languages storytime will be building on the framework of an already existing and popular bimonthly Bilingual Storytime which only features the Spanish language. World Languages will be held on the first Saturday of the month at 10:30 am when the Bilingual storytime is not on the calendar. It is with great appreciation that we would like to thank the faculty and students of Towson Universitys Foreign Languages Department for making this program possible. In a joint collaboration a full-time librarian and college student will present stories, songs, and a craft highlighting French, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese and Italian languages.

*The Towson Programming Committee is considering the implementation of this storytime idea.