Storytime at the Business Library!

Hey ABLD this is Ilana Stonebraker

I'm head of the Business/SPEA Library at

the indiana University bloomington campus and I'm going to be talking

today about a study break activity and professional development activity that

we did here at Indiana University in the business library,

which involved a storytime and Children's books.

So picture this, it's fall 2021.

We're all back on campus at Indiana University Bloomington and

obviously doing a lot of basque enforcement and the reason

why I include that as background is because that was

leading to a lot of burnout among our staff.

We are a very student focused space.

We like to imagine ourselves as being a space for students and doing

policing of mask reminders even for public health

was often very draining for a staff.

It was probably really draining for your staff to.

So what we ended up doing at Indiana University

bloomington is, I started thinking about All right,

how is the way that we can have our staff kind of

remind themselves that they are working with the students and kind of

like thinking of the students and a little bit of a more

positive interaction to counteract all the negative interactions we were having.

Uh, as we did mass reminders. Right?

So the thing I came up with is going around and asking both our students and our

full time staff if we could do some

study break activities previously was at Purdue University.

I knew this was something that students were always interested,

especially in our branch or smaller libraries as opposed to the main large ones.

So what that looked like for us is one of the things that they came up with is puzzles.

So we had a couple of puzzles.

The students also set up a couple of origami activities.

We had some grad students set up an origami as well as a poster of,

of other types of distress activities.

But one thing that kind of came out of talking

with the students is the idea of Children's books.

So um on our campus we have an education library.

You may have a large education collection as well

or access to one through your public library.

And so what we did is we used Elsie classifications working with the education

library and to find books about business that we could use for display.

So these were chosen by the education librarian

uh specifically,

but they included things like the tooth fairy ceo where he gets a job,

professional crocodile.

You can also see a book down there, girls who run the world,

a couple of books about entrepreneurship, et cetera.

And so the way that our students interacted with our student workers is that

our grad students actually made the display so they made some signs for it

um as well as organized the books into

kind of areas and there was a lot of enthusiasm for this.

Actually,

what I figured out is that um students often library

school students cause we have a library school program,

we're really interested in getting storytime experience.

So doing an actual story time.

So now that we have the books on campus, what we did next is we chose a date at a time

and um, are students selected a couple of the books from the display.

I baked cookies.

And then we had a story time in the business library using business books.

So this was a collaboration between the education library who

provided the books as well as trained our students on

how to do the work as well as brought their

own students over because who also needed storytime experience.

So it was our library school students,

but also the education majors and undergraduate also needed that.

So, um, here's a picture from the event.

You can see this is Jackson,

one of our business reference assistants who is reading a book

about a young lady who starts her own bicycle repair business.

Um, so you can see kind of folks listening in there.

This is one of the education library students who

is doing a felt story called tops and bottoms,

which is an ancient,

not ancient, a folklore story. Uh, that is focused on negotiations.

So very business. He focused as well.

It involves kind of this back and forth between as you can see the bear and the rabbit

in generals and it's very cute and allowed her to use some of her skills as well.

Um, so you may be thinking to yourself, you know, that's great.

Alana that's really cute but I don't really know if this

fits like the whole ethos of a business library right?

Like we're much more power points were much

more um you know market research etcetera.

So for all you guys that are thinking that as you're listening this

is my power point slide explaining why I think doing something like this,

Storytime could be really good at your library.

So one it's low cost. You may already have a collection on campus.

Especially a lot of us are in are ones

that might have a pretty sizable Children's collection already.

Um Storytime is also a big or storytelling

is a big aspect of business communication right?

So we found that our students were already

um uh you know going to the education library and reading Children's books.

So this really felt really well.

Additionally we had uh these study break activities,

encouraged altruistic motivation and creativity among the staff thinking

of activities that we could do in our space.

And then also getting the opportunity uh for the staff to um work

on how to make this happen I think was a great opportunity.

The process of bringing the display over one of our full time staff got

to find out how to make a new uh classification in our L.

C. In our L. C.

But in our our library content system so that

people could see that they were on display.

Uh It's also really engagement friendly.

So we made a new library partner in the education library.

And it also fit really well into the business schools mental health initiatives.

So as they were doing study break activities show away.

And we're definitely not the only you know study break activity.

But certainly uh this also reinforced kind of this book focused thing

that often students think of when they think of the library.

And it was very accessible to undergraduate student workers.

Student workers are coming from the K. 12 system.

So they're very familiar with things like story time and Children's books.

And so they were able to think of ways that

they could engage in a lot of different ways.

So that's a little bit about the process.

Um So where are we going from here?

So I mentioned that it's the business field library.

So it's the business slash school of public and environmental affairs library.

So this semester we're working on a

Earth day focused environmental books collection.

So bringing over a couple of those for a display.

But something that I'm also very excited about is the

education Library is actually going through a renovation this summer.

And uh mostly due to space constraints we are getting their puppet collection.

So I'm pretty excited about that uh to get those puppets as well.

So very excited about puppets. Uh and figuring out what we can do with those

uh in our library space as well.

I'm thinking negotiation or using them,

even just as a study break activity throughout the semester.

So that's a little bit about study breaks

and specifically storytime using build business Children's books.

If you have any questions about this presentation, you can hit me up at,

I asked the number one at iU dot E.

D. U. Or tweet at me at librarian Alana or catch me at the Happy Hour.

Thank you so much and be safe.

Storytime at the Business Library!

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