6. Services for children after the full opening (continued from the previous issue)

6-2. Storytelling
1)  Story Hour for Children
"Story Hour for Children" is regularly held on Saturdays and Sundays in the Story Hour Room, which was newly established when the ILCL was fully opened. We have two sessions each day: one from two o'clock is for children aged from four to six years and another from three o'clock targets children of seven or older (second grade of elementary school). In order to make children focus on listening to the story, we do not permit adults to enter the room during the story hour sessions. The event puts together storytelling, picture book reading, games using hand movements, poetry reciting, etc.

Storytelling is a way to link children with books by choosing a story from collections and telling it from memory. One staff member described her feelings when she narrated a story at a story hour as follows; "When I found children moved by my storytelling though I am not very good at it, I was touched and amazed to know that I have such power to impress children. Of course, it's the story itself that has the power."

The staff members of the Children's Services Division take turns to arrange a story hour. They prepare for the event by memorizing the lines of stories and choosing picture books best fit for the season for each session.

Depending on variables such as weather or other conditions, the number of participants varies from one to around thirty children. Usually, children of the neighboring prefectures in the Kanto area outnumber those who come from other areas, but sometimes children from some distant area also participate in the event during the summer vacation. Some children are, so to speak, "regular members" who participate in the event frequently, while many others have come to the library for the first time. But once "Story Hour for Children" starts, most children enjoy picture books concentrating on listening to stories with their entire body becoming "ears."

2)  Reading picture books for smaller children
We held "Picture Book Hour for smaller children" eight times in total as a special event in October 2003. Based on this experience, since April 2004, we have had a program of reading books for infants or nursery rhymes targeting children of three years old or less together with their parents on a regular basis.

It is said that recently children who come to public libraries become obviously younger and younger, and there are also many infants are accompanied by parents at the ILCL. Some parents ask for help because they do not know how to read books for their children or even how to treat their children. Maybe this is because nursery rhymes or children's songs which used to be handed down naturally by grandparents and by playing in groups are now diminishing. I hope "Picture Book Hour" to be a help to convey a message how important and how interesting "words" is to small children as well as storytelling at "Story Hour."

6-3. Other various events

During the long school vacations, various events like "games with science" and "making mini picture books," and special programs such as puppet shows or panel theater* are held. Our aim is to lead children to books by different ways from the usual storytelling.

*Panel theater means a way of telling a story to children using a panel covered with cloth and picture characters which can be easily put on and removed from the panel.

6-4. Guided tour

The ILCL gives guided tours to about a thousand people a year, in fifty groups from kindergartens, nursery schools, elementary and junior high schools, schools for disabled children and international schools. To introduce them to the pleasure of reading, we hold a story hour in addition to the standard guided tour of the facilities of the ILCL. When we guide classes or groups of students in the higher grades of elementary school and junior or senior high school, we often help them with school research assignments or respond to questions about librarians' jobs when they have to find out about occupations.

7. The basis of services for children - the importance of selection

Since the ILCL was opened, we have learned various things from offering services to children. The most important thing among them is that the basis of services for children is "selecting appropriate books."

The number of books which a child can read in his/her short childhood is limited. We hope children will meet the best possible books during that period and have many experiences of good reading as the nourishment to develop their mental maturity. The Children's Charter of Japan established in 1951 declares that "the child shall be raised in a good environment." Now as the environment surrounding children changes dramatically, libraries should guarantee opportunities for children to encounter books suitable to their stage of development and link children with books. This is the role that services for children should take.

At the ILCL, we mainly offer children materials which are purchased to put on the open shelves as duplicate copies of materials acquired via the legal deposit system. However, we concluded that it was appropriate to offer as many materials as possible that the ILCL possesses after discussions during the preparations for the full opening, considering the meaning of the ILCL's being a pan of the NDL and the purpose of the "Convention on the Rights of the Child." 

In the public services of the NDL with its role as the deposit library, the basic policy is to offer any materials requested by users. However, when providing services for children in the ILCL, especially children of lower ages, our policy is to offer materials which are selected according to fixed standards. At the counter of the Children's Room, the staff members find out what a child really needs and decide whether to substitute a similar book in the room for one requested, or offer something from the closed stacks. 

A fundamental children's service like selecting books and offering them to children is one of the functions of the ILCL as a national center for children's literature. In the Children's Room, the books are provided on the open shelves as a result of our selection. When we decide which story to tell or which picture book to read from, we are also doing selection, and in the same way we might apply it to such services as "Book Set Lending service to School Libraries" and exhibitions. All these services are based on "selection." 

The ILCL possesses the large amount of children's books published inside and outside of Japan. We would like to make it one of our duties and a pleasure to select a book from the midst of the ocean of books to offer it to children.

8. To put children's service into practice - personnel exchanges and training

To keep providing services for children as described above in the ILCL, it is necessary to nurture the staff's abilities.

Since the ILCL was fully opened, we have had regular personnel exchanges with Urayasu City Library (Chiba prefecture), Fukuoka Prefectural Library and Tokyo Children's Library. Providing services for children together with specialists who have rich experience, we have learned many things more than mere skills.

We continuously send out staff to participate in outside training courses, such as the training lecture series for librarians of children's services organized by the Japan Library Association (a comprehensive training course including both theory and practice for on-site leaders of services for children) and the storytelling workshop organized by the Tokyo Children's Library (sessions to learn and practice storytelling for the beginners).

In order to share the knowledge obtained from these outside training sessions among the staff members, we hold each month a storytelling study session and a meeting for reading basic children's books.

In addition, the ILCL staff members deepen their interaction with public librarians which offer services to children by participating in meetings such as the Japan Library Association's workshops on services to children and young adults in public libraries.

9.Changing environment of reading and the role of the Children's Room

On the occasion of the "National Year of Reading for Children in 2000," various activities related to children's reading have started all over Japan. In 2001, the "Law on the Promotion of Reading Activities for Children" was enacted. Since then, there has been a big movement related to the reading activities of children; "Basic Plan for the Promotion of Reading Activities for Children" was laid down by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology; local governments established their plans to promote reading activities for children; school libraries are now required to have teacher-librarians and so on.

Teachers who are newly in charge of school libraries or parents who want to read picture books to their children come to the Children's Room in the ILCL, and we are often asked how to select books and arrange them for school libraries or which book is good to read to children.

So far, we have managed the Children's Room considering mainly children who come to the library. However, we gradually began to realize the importance of our role to support those who provide activities related to children and books in their own community by introducing materials on the open shelves to them or answering these guests about what is important in the services for children or how to manage children's libraries effectively.

Conclusion - With children's librarians all over Japan

As I described above, the ILCL started handing books to children and continue to do so with the guidance of outside specialists. From these experiences, we have learned much about the importance of reading for children and the significance of services for children in a library and what we should respect in those services. 

The number of public libraries which at present offer services for children amounts to 58 prefecture libraries and 2,571 municipal libraries*, but it is still difficult to provide experienced librarians to offer services for children.

* This is based on "Report of investigations into actual condition of children's services on public libraries in 2003" published by the Conference of JLA's committee on Children and Young Adults.

From discussions with and questionnaires for public librarians who participated in the "ILCL Lecture Series on Children's Literature" held by the ILCL in October last year, we have learned about the difficulty of maintaining the expertise in this field, which is caused by reduction of the budget for acquisition of library materials, the introduction of the designated administrative system, personnel cuts and relations with library volunteers. 

One of the important roles of the ILCL is to contribute to the professional improvement of librarians in Japan through its activities. The "ILCL Lecture Series on Children's Literature" can be regarded as one attempt as that. We also intend to organize seminars and lecture meetings continuously utilizing the abundant collection that the ILCL possesses.

In addition to this, we, as children's literature specialists, we are trying to exchange information and views with children's librarians all over Japan who have the mission of sharing the pleasure of reading with children just like us, learn from this exchange, and develop our own forms of services for children. I believe this is our role as a national center.