The single most important thing a librarian can do to encourage children's reading is to build a dynamic, appealing, and relevant collection and to market it aggressively to every child and concerned adult in the community. However, it is increasingly important that we understand the principles of child development and apply them to our work. We need to know what social workers and other professionals involved with children are doing in our communities and find ways to partner with them to improve the lives of children and families. Social workers, nurses, pediatricians, soccer coaches, counselors, teachers, and day-care providers need to know the services that the children's librarians provide and how they mesh with their own programs. Many of these child-serving professionals will welcome the children's librarians' expertise about books and information resources they can use with their own clients.
Librarians work with parents and the community to determine children's needs.
Children's voices can also speak with authority about what they need and want from the library. In my own research on children's information needs, I have relied on adult key informants because I believe that adults define those needs for kids. However, focus groups and interviews with children can be very useful sources of data. I have interviewed children about their experiences with the Grandparents and Books program, for example, and found that these young people were very perceptive about the motivations of the older adult volunteers and about the benefits they were receiving from their interaction with them. Even informal readers' advisory interviews with kids will yield valuable information about the books children like and why.