Sunshine & Stories Explores The Why of Summer

What is Sunshine & Stories?

Sunshine & Stories is a Colorado State Library podcast dedicated to all things summer in public libraries. During our 2024-25 season, keep an eye out for new episodes twice a month from August to May. We’ll explore topics like performers, incentives, outreach, volunteers, capturing impact, and many more ideas related to designing a summer public library program for your whole community (adults included!). Featuring interviews with other Colorado State Library staff and ideas from Colorado library professionals around the state, this podcast aims to provide valuable insight and spark creative ideas in your public library’s own 2025 summer planning. Whether you’re a veteran in the summer library program planning world, a newbie looking to start a summer program for the first time, or someone who’s considering changing up your program a little or a lot this year, we hope this podcast will be a valuable resource for you.

Episode 102: The Why of Summer:

Episode Summary:

Join Kate and Kate as they discuss why we might want to ask ourselves “Why do we do summer programming?” They also consider how reflecting deeply on our why as well as engaging with our communities of service around their summer needs may lead us to discover what’s really working well and where our opportunities to innovate might lie, including how we might consider what more equitable summer service could look like. Exploring and clarifying our why can be the first step in defining what impacts we and our communities want our summer program to have in our libraries and beyond. (Full transcript available.)

00:00 – Introduction
01:14 – Why ask why and the Five Whys tool
06:56 – Where is equitable service in your why?
10:09 – Creating outcomes from whys
16:39 – Book and program highlights
18:43 – Closing

Resources:

Collaborative Summer Library Program
5 Steps of Outcome-Based Planning & Evaluation for Public Libraries by Melissa Gross, Cindy Mediavilla, and Virgina A. Walter
5 Steps of Outcome-Based Planning & Evaluation for Youth Services by Melissa Gross, Cindy Mediavilla, and Virgina A. Walter
Future Ready with the Library project (2016-2020)
Building Equity-Based Summers (BEBS)
BEBS podcast Ep 1: The Why of Equity and Equitable Summer Service (full transcript)
IDEO’s Design Kit: The Five Whys
Arapahoe Libraries’ Teen Books with Artist Main Characters book list
Wings in the Wild by Margarita Engle
Almost American Girl: an illustrated memoir by Robin Ha

Next Drop-in Chat:

Join us on August 27, 2024 at 11:00 am to noon Mountain Time for our next online Summer Drop-in Chat. No need to register. Come when you can, stay for as long as you can. See you soon!

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