Preparations for summer reading programs are already well underway at libraries across the country. These programs are such a staple that it may feel like they have been around forever. Not quite—but they are the product of another century, first taking root in the 1890s as a way to keep school-age children reading and using public libraries during their summer breaks.

Though the goal of preventing a dip in children’s reading activity and skills over the summer months remains the same today, some aspects of summer reading programs look quite different in the digital age. And ed tech platform Beanstack is leading the way in helping librarians make their summer programs fun and engaging, as well as making them effective generators of important reading data.

The most familiar elements of summer reading programs are reading challenges that give participants rewards for meeting certain goals. But setting the parameters and requirements, and tracking kids’ participation and progress along the way, presents its own challenges for librarians.

Traditionally, summer reading was tracked via paper logs kept by kids and their parents or caregivers. But since the early aughts, many librarians have sought a more streamlined—computerized—method for their record keeping. Some libraries created their own digital tracking tools, while ed tech companies developed programs that libraries could license. In 2014, Beanstack—the flagship product of reading-centric startup Zoobean—joined the fray and has been on the rise ever since.

Experienced educators based in Washington, D.C., husband-and-wife team Felix Brandon Lloyd and Jordan Lloyd Bookey cofounded Zoobean in 2013, giving the company a moniker inspired by a nickname they used for their young son, Cassius. “We often called him Cashew and then Cashew Bean,” Lloyd says, which became Zoobean. The initial concept for the business was a consumer-facing book delivery service with curated children’s books and suggested apps based on a family and child’s background and interests.

Zoobean got off the ground when it won a competition run by startup accelerator NewME and was subsequently featured on NewME’s social media accounts. That exposure caught the eye of a producer for ABC’s reality show Shark Tank. “When we went on Shark Tank just a month into the company [in 2014], we got a $250,000 investment from Mark Cuban,” Lloyd says. “He’s been excellent and has been with us over the years. But with all the traffic that came to the site, nobody bought that consumer product, and that was a clear sign to us that it was probably not going to work.” Zoobean’s next step was driven by librarians.

“From the beginning, the people who were charged with helping us pick the books to send the families and using the combination of technology and human curators were all librarians,” Lloyd says. “They started asking us just by chance, would they see us at the American Library Association conference, which that year was in Las Vegas. We knew nothing about that conference, but it was clear that with so many people expecting us to be there, maybe we should go.”

Lloyd and Bookey had about four weeks after their Shark Tank episode aired to prepare for ALA, and in that short span, they made a business pivot, developing a platform they called Beanstack. “It was still like the recommendation service in the consumer model—we were going to license the software that was helping pick the books directly to the library for them to help families choose books in the library,” Lloyd explains. “We needed a different name for the version of our service that we’d talk about at ALA, and we thought the word stack made sense to put with the bean, as in the library stacks or a stack of books,” he says.

Though Beanstack got some initial traction in Las Vegas, Lloyd notes, “Everybody at the conference was explaining that they were really busy, and they couldn’t talk to us until after summer reading. It hadn’t occurred to us how big and busy a thing summer reading was.”

Post-ALA, Zoobean started working with its first few library clients that had signed on to the Beanstack recommendation service. But, Lloyd recalls, “One of them asked us if we could do their summer reading challenge because our product had a system where you could keep track of what you’re reading. We thought that was all they needed, so we did it. And in one day, that library got more use and more signups than we had seen from the other five libraries we’d been working with all year.”

From that point forward, Lloyd says, the company began to focus primarily on summer reading for public libraries, “because there was a clear need. Paper has limitations, from people’s expectations nowadays to getting good data for the library to reaching folks outside the library space.”

This tack proved successful, as Beanstack has become the top choice of public libraries using reading-challenge software, though several smaller and open-source options are part of the landscape. The suite of tools within Beanstack now includes a mobile app in addition to the personalized book recommendation service and the core reading challenge platform and templates that feature game elements like badges, achievements, leaderboards, and reading streaks. According to the company’s 2021 Summer Reading Report, the most recent one available, “Beanstack helped 1,759 library systems [comprising more than 10,000 branches] launch 5,453 summer reading challenges in which 1,456,884 readers of all ages logged 597,662,564 minutes—adding up to more than 1,000 years of reading!”

Drilling deeper into those numbers, tracking minutes proved the most popular type of reading log in summer 2021 Beanstack programs for all readers except those younger than five. The youngest readers (ages up to five), largely the picture book set, were most engaged by logging books read. But at public libraries, summer reading isn’t just for kids. Beanstack data shows that 88% of top-performing libraries offered summer reading programming to readers of all ages in 2021. Feedback from reporting librarians confirmed that various family members enjoyed being able to participate together.

The long-established practice of offering prizes or rewards for summer reading efforts gets a closer look in the 2021 report, too. Based on Beanstack data, summer reading programs with four or more rewards saw higher sustained engagement. Among the participating libraries, the average summer reading program in 2021 included eight rewards.

The pandemic pivot

After several years of solid sales and continued fine-tuning of Beanstack’s summer reading program offerings, the pandemic hit. “We doubled our business in like a month, because all of the public libraries were closed,” Lloyd says. “We were all shutting down in March, April, and May of that year, right as summer reading was approaching. It was clear the public libraries didn’t want to be closed—they had to scramble. A lot of them knew about us, but our biggest competitor was paper. They were reluctant to give up paper reading logs or to combine it with a digital platform.” The Covid-related shutdowns resulted in sharp growth in Beanstack’s public library clientele, “but we also began to see many more schools pay attention to us.”

While the upturn in business signaled the next phase for the company, Lloyd notes that the expansion came with some challenges. “Public libraries and schools are very different,” he says. “They’re both using our product, but for different reasons. In a public library it’s to drive library usage and circulation, and not just in the summer now, but really all year long and for different age groups. But in schools, they’re using us not to bring people into the building—because they’ve got a captive audience—but to motivate more independent reading. The single biggest way to improve reading outcomes is just to get kids to read.”

Expanding into this space has meant that Beanstack has faced new competition. “In the school market, we’re not really competing against reading challenge solutions,” Lloyd says. “We’re competing against independent reading motivation solutions, and the biggest of those is Renaissance Learning’s Accelerated Reader. They’ve been around for a long time and they’re definitely the market leader.”

K–12 ed tech company Follett offers Destiny Discover Engage, an add-on subscription to its flagship Destiny Library Manager featuring programs and challenges, gamification elements like badges, progress reporting, and integrated reading recommendations. And ReadSquared, a reading program and readers advisory service platform, includes program customization, analytics, and literacy games and raffles in its mix of tools.

“We’re sort of emergent vs. these incumbents that don’t do exactly the same thing, but they solve the same problem,” Lloyd says. “We’re all chasing the same interest in that space.”

According to Lloyd, so far Beanstack has proved a helpful tool for schools striving to create a culture of reading. The first example of the company’s achievement on this front was its work with the Atlanta Public Schools, where Beanstack’s team collaborated with the district and the local public libraries to manage an initiative called Race2Read with the goal of having the whole city log millions of minutes of reading.

“At that point we said, okay, this is what we can do for schools: we can create these reading initiatives for different buildings, different regions, different cities,” Lloyd explains. “And in the last year and a half, we’ve gotten better at focusing in on a specific interest, the book lists, the curriculum options.”

Several Zoobean case studies demonstrate Beanstack’s role in helping schools improve standard test scores and reading comprehension amid concerns of Covid-lockdown-related learning losses. And Lloyd mentions Beanstack’s Classroom Library Connector feature as another way the company can assist schools in light of “the book banning struggle that’s happening in Florida, where librarians and teachers are trying to make sure they’re able to keep books on the shelves.” The tool, developed in close collaboration with Florida’s Orange County Public Schools, “empowers educators to document the titles in their classrooms and increase student engagement with their classroom books” according to Lloyd.

Another challenge Lloyd sees for Zoobean involves the digital divide. “We’re still trying to figure out how best to serve the very small library communities where the connectivity may not be as great,” he says. “They may be small in the population served but relatively expansive in the geography they cover—maybe 5,000 or 10,000 people in any jurisdiction.”

As business has grown, so too has the team behind it. Zoobean’s more than 30 employees work remotely in Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh, Pa. The team of 12 in Pittsburgh includes the company’s CTO and “most of the engineering talent,” Lloyd says. At present Beanstack’s customer base encompasses 2,400 library systems, more than 3,000 schools, more than 180 school districts, and more than 8.9 million readers.

Publisher participation

In addition to libraries and schools, Zoobean has partnered with publishers in various capacities. Lloyd calls Lerner Publishing Group “our most significant partner when it comes to publishers—you can read some of their e-books directly within our logging system.” During the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, Lerner teamed with Zoobean to offer distance learners a series of reading challenges with such themes as sports and nonfiction.

“We also partner with other publishers, to potentially create reading challenges that help promote an author while also helping get students excited,” Lloyd notes. As examples, Simon & Schuster’s Books Like Us program of diverse books and Penguin Random House have each served as sponsors for the annual Beanstack Winter Reading Challenge, which takes place each January. In 2021, S&S awarded book collections and virtual author visits to the winning schools and libraries. Likewise, PRH donated $50,000 in prizes for the 2020 Winter Reading Challenge.

“It’s not really content-based,” Lloyd says, “and they don’t pay us, and we don’t pay them. For them it’s a way of driving interest, and for us, it’s a way of driving engagement and giving people something new.”

Zoobean continues to develop new Beanstack features and innovative ways to connect with communities and motivate readers. Recent examples include reading fundraisers and the Reading Culture podcast, hosted by Bookey, which presents interviews with diverse authors who provide themed reading challenges for listeners.

Looking ahead, Lloyd says he always has an eye—and an ear—out for something fresh. “Librarians and teachers are by nature very engaged,” he notes, “so they are an easy audience to get feedback from and ideas from, as they want our product to be better.” He adds that social media and direct client engagement play a role, and that attending numerous conferences, including this month’s TLA, remains a priority. “We’re constantly in those settings, and we learn a lot that way.”

Read more from our School & Library Spotlight:

In the Field with Beanstack
We take a closer look at how one library system, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, is tracking summer reading with the digital platform.