Children’s Classes and Workshops at Public Libraries: Lessons from an Online Marketplace

ABSTRACT Classes and workshops for children are a core part of the service provided by many public libraries to their communities. But are libraries offering the kind of classes that children and parents are most interested in? Can libraries offer a compatible alternative to paid online platforms like Outschool? In this study, I attempt to answer these questions by looking at trends from an online virtual class marketplace. Outschool is an online marketplace of virtual classes for children. As of November 2021, Outschool offers over 140,000 virtual classes. To help users discover classes they might like, Outschool makes it possible to list classes sorted by popularity. In this project, I will look at the top 50 most popular classes offered by Outschool. By reading class descriptions and identifying common themes and subject matters, I will provide a taxonomic breakdown of the most popular topics on the site. I will then compare this to the class and workshop offerings for children provided by the largest public library system in North America, the New York Public Library. By comparing the offerings of the online marketplace with those provided by the NYPL, I will identify gaps in the library’s offerings and suggest subject matters that are likely to have a broad appeal to the communities they serve.