Video Tour of the EI Clearinghouse

Join us for an informational tour of the library and the resources it has to offer families, caregivers and professionals in Illinois. (View transcript below video.)

Library Tour Transcript

Kristen: Hello, and thanks for tuning in. I’m Kristen, a graduate student studying early childhood special education at the University of Illinois, and today I’m here at the Illinois Early Intervention Clearinghouse to tell you a little bit about our library. So, as you may or may not know, the library is a place full of resources for parents, teachers, service providers, caregivers—anyone across the state who works with young children. So stick with me, and I’ll take you on a tour of the library.

Kristen: Now, you may be wondering, what makes this library different than other libraries? Here at the clearinghouse, as I mentioned before, parents, teachers, service providers and caregivers can check out materials free of charge from the library, and we have information on early childhood, special education, early intervention, parenting, a variety of different disabilities—really anything about early childhood that you may be wondering. So, let’s stop in and see if our librarian is here so we can ask her some questions about the checking out process.

Kristen: Here we are with our librarian, Sarah, who’s going to give us a bit of information about how the checking out and receiving books process works.

Sarah: Welcome, and thanks for stopping by the clearinghouse. To check out materials, we just need to enter your contact information in our database. There, we’ll keep your library card here, at the library, so whenever you needed something, all you’d need to do is call or stop by, and we can check things out. Once you select some materials or tell us a topic that you’re interested in, we’ll find some materials—some books or DVDs—and then you can borrow up to five items at a time, and they check out for four weeks. If you need them for longer, you can just call us or email us and tell us you’d like to renew them, and most of the time we don’t have a problem renewing, except for some of those hot topics items.

We love to have visitors here at the clearinghouse, but most of our stuff checks out over the mail, through the mail. So we usually mail materials a couple times a week, and they go out through the U.S. Postal Service directly to your home. You can also go to your local public library and request materials, and they’ll use the interlibrary loan system to have our materials directly routed to that public library, and then you can pick them up at the public library. So there’s two ways to get materials: either directly to your home or through your local public library.

Once you’re done with the books or the DVDs, you can either mail them back directly to us or, again, go to your local public library, even if you didn’t get them from there originally, you can go to your local public library, and they’ll route them back through the interlibrary loan delivery van system that all these Illinois libraries are connected with. So that’s a great way to return materials inexpensively. So let’s see what else there is to see.

Kristen: Well, thanks Sarah, and we’ll continue our tour.

Kristen: Here we are in the main room of the library. In this room materials are typically categorized together by topic, and they will have the same call number beginning. So for example, behind me I have books on parenting that have the call number HQ. And under these parenting books, we have a variety of different topics such as single parenting, grandparents parenting kids with special needs, dealing with common parenting issues such as discipline or biting, or other parenting questions that you may be interested in, we could look and see if we have that book for you.

Kristen: In the back corner of the library, we also have a shelf with materials entirely in Spanish so all of our materials that are written in Spanish are kept in one spot. Next to me we also have information on curriculum that teachers can check out. We have preschool and primary grade curriculums here that teachers can use to support the curriculum that their school is working with. And also behind me and throughout the library we have information on a variety of different disabilities.

Kristen: Behind me you may have noticed our display that we currently have on play and developmentally appropriate toys. On this slatboard we have displays that change throughout the year, so if you’re ever here and stop in you might see some different displays, but this one currently is on play, and it has resources on what teachers could do to incorporate play into the curriculum, how developmental therapists could use play as part of their therapy, and how parents can use play to work with their kids and build relationships with their kids on a daily basis. We also have resource lists here on play that contain information on how parents—parenting can be play—and that also have information on different books that you can check out related to play. [In addition, we also have a number of resource lists that cover a variety of other topics.]

Kristen: Just off the main room of the library we have a media room full of DVDs, VHSs, and CDs about different topics in early childhood. We have information on play and parenting, as well as on development, and sign language, and on a variety of specific disabilities.

Kristen: Off the main room of the library we also have a room with our journal collection. In the journal collection we have peer-reviewed journals and magazines on a variety of different topics—parenting, behaviors, child development, really any topics on early childhood—and you can come in and pick out an article that you may be interested in and we can photocopy it for you, or you could send us an email about a topic you’re interested in and we could email you an article from one of the journals.

Kristen: The last room of the library is a little bit different because everything in this room is focused on one topic: autism. In this room we house some of the state’s autism collection books, and you’ll notice that they all have an orange dot on them. If they have the orange dot, it means that they are on autism and they’re from this collection. In the main library we do have other resources on autism, but this is where you’ll find the majority. We have books, DVDs, and VHSs that cover topics from having a child with autism, recognizing some of the signs of autism, having a parent with autism, and transitioning through life with autism.

Kristen: At the clearinghouse we’re also constantly updating our resources. We have a whole shelf of just new books and DVDs that are available for checkout, and if there’s something that you’re interested in that we don’t have at the library, make sure to let the librarian know and we can see about ordering it and adding it to our new shelf.

Kristen: Thanks for stopping by today to join me for a tour of the Illinois Early Intervention Clearinghouse library. Now want to know a secret? It’s even better in person. The library is open from 8 to 5, Monday through Friday, and we would love to give you a live tour and help you find any resources you may need. Please feel free to stop by anytime. If you live out of town, then you can check out materials on our Web site or give the library a call for more information. And make sure to like us on Facebook to stay up to date on fabulous early childhood resources.