Nurturing Tomorrow’s Readers: The Role of Storytime in Ontario Public Libraries
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Library storytime is a core service in many public libraries that provides a multitude of benefits to children's early development. Currently, the existing literature on storytime research, especially within the Canadian context, is limited. Using case study research, my thesis aims to address the critical research question: How are storytimes being conducted in today’s public libraries? This research is grounded in sociocultural theory, which emphasizes the significance of social and cultural contexts in shaping children’s early development through social interactions. The data collected includes in-program observations, storytime outlines, and audio recordings of storytime, as well as interviews with storytime providers and caregivers. Findings reveal that current storytime programs emphasize multimodal learning and play-based pedagogical approaches, ultimately benefitting the library, caregivers, and children. Storytime providers incorporate abundant strategies in their planning and delivery to engage, scaffold, and manage participants. Importantly, the study concludes that the provider, content, and professional development are exemplary elements for storytimes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.029 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".