I spent nearly every recess in my school library, and my mom brought me to the public library at least once per week. When I was old enough, I walked by myself after school to the public library, where I hung out until my mom could pick me up on her way home from work.
If I’d been unable to regularly check out books — if, for example, I had an unpaid fee for a lost or damaged book, I might not have been able to develop into the reader that I am today.
Small, et al. (2017, p. 8) tell us that “Intrinsic motivation is the enthusiasm to engage in a task for its own sake out of interest or enjoyment” while “extrinsically motivated learning environments are those that are formed by external consequences, typically some type of tangible reward system or prize, such as candy or money or even a grade.”
The use of incentives has been “a touchy issue since summer reading programs first began” but as Sullivan points out (2013, p. 225), good readers (those who “see reading as a pleasure”) are not the readers that libraries need to reach out to in the summer (ibid).
As part of my studies for LIS 5100, I have been tasked with designing a reading program. My reading project is specifically intended to address an extrinsic goal: of allowing students to “read-down” fees that prevent them from checking books out from the library. The “reward” of waived fees is directly related to the time that students spend reading.
I hope that, while reading to waive library fees, students derive intrinsic enjoyment — but they will potentially derive still more intrinsic enjoyment with accounts unclouded by fines.
Small, R., Arnone, M. & Bennett, E. (2017). A hook and a book: Rewards as motivators in public library summer reading programs. Children & Libraries, (15)1, 7-15. https://journals.ala.org/index.php/cal/article/view/6236/8123
Sullivan, M. (2013). Fundamentals of children’s services (2nd ed.) American Library Association.
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