This week's readings

Week 2 readings from our textbook ,Colin Robson's Real World Research: Second Edition, are about how to develop a research proposal, what theory of evaluation to use and ethics. This is timely considering my topic is on Foster Care youth and libraries. When I was working with the foster care agency, they were always using at least three different types of evaluations to determine how the child was doing, and this was of course kept completely private with only the child/parent/social worker/administrative staff knowing about it (unless of course it is audited by a professional audit group such as those working for Department of Social Services). When working with under-age children, as the text points out, "the parents or guardians should be asked for their [the child's] consent. In many cases, the child will be able to appreciate at least something of what is involved and should be asked directly in addition to the parent (Robson, 70)." So when formatting the research proposal, it would be important to make the evaluation source, for example a survey, open to both the youth and their parent/legal guardian.

I was actually curious of how to administer the survey down the road if the research ever made it past the proposal stage. I was thinking of asking some friends of mine who are social workers from my previous job about it, as I'm sure you would have to get some sort of authorization from DSS and/or from the foster care agency you decided to use. I was thinking it might be a good idea to partner with a foster care agency like DSS or SAFY (my former workplace) so they could share the resources available with their foster parents and children. The librarians involved could provide booklists about children in foster care.

More Database Searching

I figure that the more articles I can find and read on the subject, the more likely I am to decide on this topic and more importantly what exactly to focus on. I decided to browse Gamecock Power Search again to try to find more articles, as I only found 4-5 I could possibly use, though I will have to read through them to verify even this amount. So I searched "foster care, teenagers, and libraries" to see if I could get more hits. Most of the articles were from the Psychology or Nursing fields, though some had to do with literature and youth. I found these articles:

Winerip, Michael. "Getting a Grip on Survival Skills For Fending in an Unfair World". New York Times: May 14, 2003.
                    This article was about a young man who was in foster care and how going to a library and how working there helped him.

Quinn, Jane. "Where Need Meets Opportunity: Youth Development Programs for Teens". The Future of Children (Princeton University). Vol. 9, No. 2, When School Is out (Autumn, 1999), pp. 96-116
                   This article discusses the need for youth development programs, which includes going to the public library.

Update

I went to Richland County Public Library's online databases to try to see if I could find the article on "The Letterbox Club" that I had the abstract of earlier but couldn't find the full text. The article looked really intriguing and could be vital to my project. So I asked the reference person on duty to see if s/he could find the full text article, and they couldn't but offered to get it for me on ILL. So hopefully I will get it soon to make sure that is what I am looking for.

They found the article but it costs $10 to ship as the only place they have it is Nebraska, so have to decide if I really want it or not. Decisions, decisions.

Information Searching

The reason I am interested in picking this topic is because I used to work as an Administrative Assistant type position in a local foster care agency in Columbia. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least. I definitely have a lot more respect for adults who open their homes up to total strangers in an attempt to change their lives for the better. I've seen the kids that come into the program and are transferred from home to home with only a few suitcases and some trash bags full of all their worldly possessions. And out of 60 kids, I only saw two teenagers who enjoyed reading. I wondered if the reason for this was because of their constantly moving lifestyle, of which they have little or no control over, or if it was something else. I thought it would be a great idea for public libraries to reach out to this population group and try to encourage them to read and/or find some way for them to be involved in the library.

I've not seen any articles or research done on my proposed subject matter, so I went to Thomas Cooper Library online to look through their databases, through Gamecock Power Search. I searched for the keywords "foster children, libraries, and literacy." It came up with mostly articles on early childhood literacy, general public outreach programs for Children's Departments, literacy programs for below poverty level kids, information literacy skills, and adult illiteracy. I will have to narrow my search.

The only article so far that may prove useful is one from:

Morrow, Lesley Mandel. "The Impact of a Literature-Based Program on Literacy Achievement, Use of Literature, and Attitudes of Children from Minority Backgrounds" Reading Research Quarterly Vol. 27 No. 3 (Summer, 1992), pp. 250-275.

I searched again, this time only using the terms "foster children" and "library" and got better results. On target resources include:

Terrile, V. C. Where They Live Now: What Public Libraries Can Do for Teens in Foster Care. Voice of Youth Advocates v. 32 no. 5 (December 2009) p. 374-6
The Terrile article led to a website for the foster children magazine called Represent: The Voice of Youth in Care, which I'm hoping maybe I can find on the library's journal listings. This article also pointed the way to another article by VOYA called:

Rex, A. Home for a While [Bibliographical essay]. Voice of Youth Advocates v. 31 no. 5 (December 2008) p. 396-9

Neumark, Victoria. "Something Worth Sharing" TES CAMPAIGN; Time To Care; Pg. 31 No. 4706
This article was about a mentoring/reading program in the UK for foster kids

McClellan, K. From Classroom to Courtroom: Our Role in the Community. Public Libraries v. 48 no. 1 (January/February 2009) p. 62-5
This article was about a program that was started in Kansas, to read to foster kids at home and to give out books for kids that go to court, and also about fiction books on foster care.

I then decided to try to search "foster children" and "reading" hoping that I could get more hits this way. That search was not that helpful, mostly giving me back Social Work essays and articles. One of the only useful articles I found was:

The Letterbox Club: The impact on looked-after children and their carers of a national project aimed at raising achievements in literacy for children aged 7 to 11 in foster care.

Dymoke, Sue; Griffiths, Rose.

Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs (1471-3802)

Mar, 2010. Vol.10,Iss.1;p.52-60
This looked really interesting, but I was unable to find anything more than an abstract on it. I will try at my local public library once the server comes back online.

So then I searched "foster care, teenagers and libraries," which didn't really show any promising results. After exhausting the article search, I decided to look for books available through Thomas Cooper Library. I searched under "foster care" and "libraries" and found mostly government documents. However, I did find an updated book about foster care in Children's literature:

Meese, Ruth Lyn. Family matters : adoption and foster care in children's literature. Santa Barbara, CA.: Libraries Unlimited, 2010.

First Post

My name is Rachel and this blog is for one of my last classes, Intro to Research, for my Masters in Library and Information Science. It is my online research diary. I have to develop a research proposal on a topic of my choosing. Since my focus is in Youth Services in a Public Library, it will probably have to do with that. I'm thinking about doing it on foster children and access to the library and/or literacy, but I haven't nailed down a topic yet. Feel free to post comments below.