Addressing Teen Reading Dropoff through the Leonard Library

Libraries in Transition

Libraries are changing rapidly as digitization revolutionizes the way information is provided and consumed. An incredible wealth of content is now housed online where it is available instantaneously, forcing libraries to redefine themselves. These days, libraries can be classified into two categories—high circulation and mixed use.

High circulation libraries still enjoy a large volume of book checkouts, but mixed use libraries have turned their focus away from being traditional book repositories and look to new ways they can serve their communities. They have decreased the number of books and shelves in their spaces in order to create free workspace, and they offer computer access and classes. But not every community has both. High circulation libraries tend to be concentrated in places that enjoy relative economic prosperity where engagement in reading tends to be higher. But this merely reinforces a self-fulfilling cycle where areas of low-engagement in reading do not have the resources to remedy their low engagement.

Engagement

Even as mixed-use libraries such as the Leonard Branch in Williamsburg, Brooklyn have access to larger collections available through the Brooklyn Public Library System’s Website, readers won’t use library websites to find books if they aren’t interested in reading to begin with. How then to increase engagement? Are their digital solutions available? If not, can we create them?

Working With The Leonard Library

History

One of Brooklyn Public Library’s original Carnegie branches. The branch officially opened its doors on December 1, 1908, at its current site at Devoe and Leonard Streets in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

67 libraries in Brooklyn and Queens (including the Leonard Branch) were built with funds from one grant totaling $5,202,261 (worth some $150 million today), awarded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York on December 8, 1899. There are a grand total of 2509 Carnegie libraries across the globe, with 1689 in the US.

Today

The Leonard Library serves the varied community of Williamsburg, a neighborhood populated by old Italian families, hipster artists, young parents and their children, and the homeless. It has the highest attendance of all the libraries in the Williamsburg-Greenpoint area, but they’ve moved away from housing many books on the premises and they have limited wayfinding.

They have many services designed to suit these varied needs—programs to help job seeking, space for children to play, and work stations for freelancers. They offer several different types of digital resources: lynda, overdrive, flipster, mango, and more.

Of the three libraries in the Williamsburg-Green Point Area, they have the highest annual attendance, boasting nearly 20,000 more visits per year than the Williamsburg Branch or the Greenpoint Branch, however circulation is the lowest and they have the lowest number of volumes on the premises. The labeling system is more robust on the website than in the physical plant. Patrons are expected to do most browsing and actions through this portal, thus impacting book discovery.

Patrons

There are two prominent user groups for this library, those who use the space for work and play and come for the many classes (this may include parents of young children, older members of the community, and the homeless), and those who page books off the website and swing by to pick them up.

Juvenile Use

The Leonard library has several programs for very young kids and seeks to attract middle school and high school students who need a space to do their homework.

Teens suffer from low-engagement in reading globally, but are also underserved at Leonard.

Research and Key Findings About Teen Readers

As compared with 54% of children surveyed. Children's interest in reading for pleasure dropped off when they hit high school. Additionally, cell-phones and streaming have likely had an additional impact, because there's a marked drop from 1980, when 48% of teens claimed to read for pleasure.

Girls spend an average of 30 minutes more on reading for pleasure per day than boys. The publishing industry reflects this. Most young adult novels are geared towards a female audience.

Overwhelmingly, data shows that people would prefer to receive books recommendations from their peers over algorithms or suggestions supplied by publishers and booksellers.

The Problem

University of Virginia’s Daniel Willingham stated that, “Attitudes toward reading peak in early elementary years. With each passing year, students’ attitudes towards reading drop.” This is detrimental for teens, because there’s a strong link between reading for pleasure and educational outcomes, as well as social and health benefits. In 2002, the OECD said that reading was a greater determinant of educational success than family’s socioeconomic status. Leonard, unfortunately, compounds this problem of teen reading dropoff as they make the necessary transition towards a community center and away from being a traditional high circulation library. We’re at a point of no return now. Libraries are not going to transition away from digital media, and it is likely that they will carry fewer and fewer volumes onsite. However, if the problem is digital, surely there is also a digital solution to increase book discovery and help elevate reading discovery in young people.

Before any such digital solution can be considered, one needs to understand the underlying causes of teen reading dropoff. One of the most problematic for young readers is school curriculum in and of itself. There is tension with assigned reading in the educational system. As teens reach high school, the reading comprehension level necessitated by the books they’re assigned increases drastically, and school curriculums often rely on books traditionally considered classics like Dickens and Hardy and Steinbeck, which, with their differences in vocabulary, can be difficult for young readers to digest. Teens often stop identifying reading with pleasure and instead associate it with struggle.

It is also thought that teens avoid books because they assume they will have trouble sustaining attention. This is reinforced by how many other forms of media they have competing for the attention—netflix, gaming, social media. With assigned books, one is required to read all the words assigned, but for books read for pleasure if it isn’t entertaining, the reader doesn’t have to finish it. It isn’t made clear to young readers that if they dislike a book or find they can’t get through it, that they can discard it. Additionally, with the overwhelming numbers of books out there, especially as traditional bookstores close and libraries carry fewer books, it can be difficult to figure out what choices are actually available to them. If they’re only exposed to those aforementioned volumes of Hardy, Steinbeck, and Dickens, it can be easy to assume that that is all that reading is, and that if teens don’t like those specific books they may assume that they don’t like reading at all. An easy solution is some medium that can allow teens to fully explore their reading options and doesn’t place unreasonable demands on them, so that they no longer consider the act of reading a pain point.

Proposed Solution

Concept

• An app that can help in book discovery aimed at teens

• Recommending recommenders

• Simulating serendipity

In order to engage teen girls, we must look to the ways that they’re already involved with digital/online platforms. I want to create an app that facilitates book discovery for teen girls and allows them to connect with their peers and create communities and fannish spaces. Drawing on the gamified aspects of tinder and snapchat, the app should allow teen girls to identify like-minded readers, volunteer recommendations or requests, and begin discussion. The aim is to demystify reading, demonstrate the ways in which it can be pleasurable and better connect teens with the tremendous reading resources available to them.

I asked young adult women on tumblr how they read, where they discovered books, what sorts of books they liked, what inspired them to read, and what impact their friends played in this process.

Process

So how did you go about drawing on these gamified aspects? It seemed the best way was to look at the ways that various sites generated recs for their user populations (netflix, goodreads and so on).

Userflow

I started conceptualizing exactly how users would enter the site, modeling it after the netflix model.