In 2015, Prince George's County had the lowest kindergarten readiness scores in Maryland. Stakeholders and county agencies alike were concerned, and the library offered resources to support these children. PGCMLS worked with OrangeBoy to map and track customer registration, market penetration and in-library activities of customers before and after a significant campaign to engage families in new summer reading. The heat map showed staff and stakeholders where efforts and assets needed to be concentrated. To graphically present areas of high risk dramatically highlighted the importance of this work and revealed some new areas that needed support.

PGCMLS had laid the groundwork with student accounts available, improved programming and social media campaigns. Results showed the importance of staff commitment to outreach, though not directly related to the number of staff required to affect change. System-level coordination was key, and specific planned events were most successful, such as registering students during a lunch period at a high school. County and corporate partners supported the effort. The mapping highlighted the need for a branch in the southern part of the county, and planning has begun. Continued review of this data enables us to track library use and engage families.

Summer Reading participation more than doubled (106%) in 2015. There was an appreciable increase (4%) in kindergarten readiness in the last published survey, while this number plateaued or decreased in other counties. This year's summer reading program (2016) participation has already surpassed last year's registration, with weeks left in the program. This attention to a specific county-wide need boosted the library's effort to create a stronger partnership with public schools, enabling us to achieve a long-desired goal, registering every public school student for a library account, erasing every barrier to accessing library resources, called LINK.