Reflects on the findings of the ‘A place for children’ project, a major collaborative research project which investigated the extent and value of support for children and young people’s reading provided by UK public libraries. Notes the four areas highlighted by the study in which provision could be improved: use of information and communications technologies (ICT) to support reading development; use of national and/or regional literacy initiatives; support for children with special needs; and support for the literacy of children from multicultural backgrounds. Discusses the developments that have taken place in these areas in the three years since the original research was conducted and provides an overview of the current state of provision. Reports results of a questionnaire survey involving 127 heads of children’s services at the 209 public library authorities (60.8 per cent response rate), and presents results of a survey of children’s Web sites in the UK. Concludes that, although the provision of ICT facilities and children’s Web sites has developed since 1997, there are still many public libraries that offer little or no provision. There is a lot of variation in the use that is made of children’s Web sites by those authorities that have them. Greater numbers of authorities are participating in national and regional initiatives, examples including: Bookstart; National Year of Reading; Building a Nation of Readers; Launchpad; National Children’s Book Week; Reading is Fundamental, UK. Little change was detected in the area of support for children with special needs and only limited progress was revealed to have occurred in the provision of support for the literacy of children from multi-cultural backgrounds.

No abstract

No abstract

It is almost twenty years since Janet Hill's seminal work, Children Are people 1 was published in the UK. Since then, other books have been written about British public library services to children 2,3,4 but none of these have taken a visionary approach. There has been little attention paid to the ways libraries have responded to the multifarious influences presented by society or any real attempt made to anticipate a future role or philosophy for public library services to children. Research in the area has been thin and has not kept pace with research in the school library field.Concern about the low profile of children's libraries and lack of understanding at national or government level of their role in the intellectual, social or cultural development of the child has been a source of concern for a number of years. A recent report by a working party set up to look at the current state of library services for children. Investing in Children, attempts to redress this balance. This article assesses how effectively this has been achieved and analyses how practitioners have responded to the report.

The image of a gloomy old library with a librarian telling children to be quiet is, thankfully, a thing of the past. Today's libraries are lively, welcoming places with a vast number of resources to help your child develop their reading and learning skills.