Storytimes for School Readiness

Project Description: Very little empirical research exists to support the development and delivery of high quality storytimes, making it difficult to use evidence-based practices in preparing, presenting, and justifying the value of storytimes, a cornerstone of public library programming for children. The primary goals of this research, for which we request $395,000, are to identify links between strategies employed, resources used, language interactions that occur, and the nature of the language environment within storytimes to 1) determine the extent to which they currently support school readiness and expectations of caregivers and 2) pinpoint promising practices for storytime program planning and delivery to enable public libraries to better support the developmental needs of children and their caregivers.