By Audrey Post
CCI Director of Communications
  TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Researchers from The Florida State University’s College of Communication & Information are collaborating with a team from the University of Washington and several Washington agencies on a project intended to boost early literacy initiatives in the nation’s public libraries.
 “Project VIEWS: Valuable Initiatives in Early Learning that Work Successfully” was awarded a highly competitive National Leadership Grant in collaborative planning from the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The $92,744 grant was matched by $57,482 from the universities and their partners in the research: the Washington Early Learning Public Library Partnership of 25 urban, suburban and rural library systems and Washington’s Foundation for Early Learning.
  Its purpose is to create a plan that ultimately extends Washington’s successful early learning services and partnerships to serve as a model for the nation’s public libraries. Specifically, researchers want to develop an assessment instrument for measuring librarians’ knowledge of “emergent literacy” skills and abilities in pre-schoolers that prepare them to learn to read once they start school, as well as a means for measuring the impact on children of early literacy programs in which libraries play a leadership role. The state of Washington public librarians train other practitioners who work with young children, e.g. in-home child care workers, to be aware of emergent literacy signs and join early learning initiatives statewide through the Foundation for Early Learning; this grant will extend their partnerships and collaborative efforts.
  “The literacy rate in this country has been declining, and it’s too late to start literacy initiatives with children when they’re 5 or 6 years old and starting school,” said Dr. Kathleen Burnett, an associate professor in the School of Library & Information Studies and FSU’s principal investigator on the project. “The public libraries have become really involved in early-learning initiatives.”
  Janet Capps, a doctoral student in Information Studies, has been a guiding force in the project, Burnett said, because her dissertation focuses on developing an instrument to measure emergent literacy knowledge of providers.
  “Project VIEWS is a highly collaborative research project and it is exciting to see the strong connection between researchers and practitioners,” Capps said.
   Dr. Eliza Dresang of the University of Washington, who spent 12 years on the faculty at FSU and is the project’s principal investigator, said she turned to FSU researchers Burnett and Capps to join her in this endeavor, as their expertise in early literacy complements and adds value to her own. The one-year planning project will identify where the best early learning initiatives exist and how their impact can be assessed; it will produce a White Paper that documents needed early learning research. A planning grant carries a commitment to apply for another grant to carry out the actual project.
  “I’m very optimistic we will enhance the programs in Washington, develop a model for early learning initiatives and their assessment nationwide and infuse more about this into the University of Washington Information School curriculum,” Dresang said.

For more information, contact Kathleen Burnett, kburnett@fsu.edu, or Eliza Dresang, edresang@u.washington.edu.