Data for Services for Children of All Abilities in Libraries (SCALE) project

The University of Kentucky, in collaboration with the University of Missouri and Emporia State University, and in partnership with the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives, the State Library of Kansas, the State Library of Missouri, the Kansas State Department of Education, the Kentucky Department of Education, and the Kentucky Governor’s Office of Early Childhood, engaged in a four-year exploratory stage, multi-state, Research in Service to Practice project investigating the effectiveness of library services, practices, and behaviors effective for serving children with disabilities and/or developmental delays who span ages birth to 5-years. Aligned with the IMLS agency-level Promote Lifelong Learning goal and the continuous learning for families and individuals with diverse backgrounds and needs objective, this project was designed to gather evidence to support the value of libraries as community resources for individuals with disabilities and also to provide information to help librarians better tailor services and programs to meet the needs of young children with disabilities and/or developmental delays as well as the families, educators, and interventionists who care for those children.

Project data included in this data set are as follows: 129 caregiver survey responses and the following transcripts: 10 caregiver interviews, 21 child interviews, 8 library director interviews, 8 focus group interviews with a total of 14 Early Intervention Service Coordinators, 20 children’s librarian interviews, 12 think-aloud (video elicitation) interviews of librarians describing planned and in-the-moment decision-making in programs for children, 1 interview of an administrator at a site where a library provides outreach programming, and 1 interview with a school district director of special education.

Additional data collected but not shared include audio files of all interviews, video files and field notes from 27 program observations.