Summer Reading Program’s End Draws Near

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – The Muskingum County Library System holds their Summer Reading Program to promote literacy and keep developing minds growing. MCLS Youth Services Manager Haley Shaw explained the benefits and goals of the Summer Reading Program.

“Basically, what our Summer Reading Program is, we challenge people to read throughout the summer as well as do activities, log the number of minutes that they’re spending reading, and as you do that, you enter to win different prizes, which is really exciting. Then we put those minutes into a pool and that is our community minutes reading and we’re currently just over a minute and we’re trying to get to 2 million by the end of the summer,” Shaw said.

The library has around 2,000 people participating in the program but are unsure if they will reach their goal because of people waiting until the last minute to log their minutes on the library’s website.

“You can go on our website to register for Beanstack or call us,” Shaw said. “We use an app called Beanstack that we use to track minutes. It’s Really awesome because if you go in and add the books that youre reading, you can actually set a timer so you don’t have to time your number of minutes. It does it for you and logs it automatically.”

With less than two weeks remaining, participants have reached approximately 1.2 million minutes and the math averages out to 16.6 hours required per participant to reach the program’s goal.