The Power of Play: Designing Early Learning Spaces

Dorothy Stoltz is director for community engagement at the Carroll County (MD) Public Library. She is the coauthor of several books and articles for the American Library Association, including Inspired Collaboration: Ideas for Discovering and Applying Your Potential (2016). With more than thirty-five years of experience in public libraries, she is active in the Library Leadership & Management Association, the Public Library Association, and the Association for Library Service to Children.

Marisa Conner, MEd, coordinates the programming and services for children and youth at Baltimore County (Maryland) Public Library. She created Early Learning Activity Centers in all nineteen branches at BCPL and designed the learning components for both Storyvilles, BCPL's award winning early childhood learning environments. She brings twenty-seven years' experience in education and over nine years' experience in public libraries to her work. She has presented workshops and trainings on creating play spaces in libraries at state, regional, and national conferences, including Virginia, Montana, New York, Maryland, PLA, ALA, and to the 2011 national children's conference in Denmark, BOEFA. She taught at Johns Hopkins University for over eight years. In 2014 she became a member of the ALSC/PLA Every Child Ready to Read Oversight Committee.James Bradberry, AIA, LEED, is an award winning architect/author and principal of James Bradberry Architects, located in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He has taught architecture at Yale, Penn, and the Technical University of Nova Scotia, and his work has been published in the US and abroad. His firm has designed several noted interactive learning environments for children, including two Storyville projects for the Baltimore County Public Library, and the Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton University. He is the author of four novels-The Seventh Sacrament (1994), Ruins of Civility (1996), Eakins' Mistress (1997), and The 32nd of December (2014).

James Bradberry, ALA, LEED, is an award winning architect/author, and Principal of James Bradberry Architects, located in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Auburn University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cambridge University, where he was a Fulbright and Lusk Fellow. He has taught architecture at Yale, Penn, and the Technical University of Nova Scotia, and his work has been published in the US and abroad. His firm has designed several noted interactive learning environments for children, including two ‘Storyville' projects for the Baltimore County Public Library and the Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton University. He is the author of several novels, including The Seventh Sacrament and Ruins of Civility. Bradberry is also co-author of The Power of Play: Designing Early Learning Spaces (ALA Editions 2014).