The vending machines were set up in high-traffic areas of low-income neighbourhoods in Detroit and Washington, D.C. to see how their access would affect family reading patterns and the academic downside over summer.
The machines did well. They dispensed more than 64,000 free books to 26,200 unique readers and 38,235 repeat users over the summer. However, the experiment in whole provided great insight into the people were surveyed and interviewed and a lot of data was gathered and assessed from the interaction with the machines.
The presence of book vending machines wasn’t enough to get children uninterested in reading to pick up a book, though. Forty percent of passersby browsed but didn’t make a selection.
“Our findings suggest that only having one side of the equation — access to books or adult support — is insufficient,” said co-author Susan B. Neuman in a press release. “Children need access to books in their neighbourhoods, as well as adults who create an environment that inspires reading.”
The experiment found that children who visited the vending machines with their child-care centre and independently with their parents or grandparents could recognize more book titles in an assessment than children who visited with only one source of adult support or neither. Children in preschool with more adult support also showed slight improvements in school-readiness skills over the summer.
Lots of previous research has pointed has indicated the benefits of reading to a child developing a brain. So such access is provided, even if for an experiment was truly a good deed. Hopefully, further experiments will show how to encourage reading in children who don’t want to read.