Hi everyone and welcome back! Although I do love summer and the opportunity to “take it easy” with friends and family, I honestly do look forward to coming back to school. I am very lucky to have found a job that I truly enjoy.
Now, about the library. Well, if you’ve been in to visit during the first couple of days of school you’d know that it’s a bit of a mess right now! Although I really wanted everything to be up and running when we all came back, we took on a project that needed to be taken on! We are “ditching dewey” and re-shelving our books in a more kid friendly and “easy to find what you’re looking for” manor! I’m not the first school librarian to try this; here are some teacher-librarians’ feet I’m following: Tamara Cox, Shannon Miller, Kristie Miller, The Librarians at Ethical Culture
The first step to this process is to weed books that are no longer current, appealing, reliable or relevant. In all honesty we’ve been doing this for the past two years, but have failed to be as aggressive as needed. In a nutshell, Lounsberry’s library still has too many old and out of date books! We’re discarding a lot of books, and yes it’s a bit scary, but it’s a necessity! Weeding has actually been a cleansing experience for me; I don’t think I truly realized how much our overabundance of old books has been hanging over my head.
Our next step, which we should be ready to start on Tuesday, is to re-shelve books in a way that makes sense for our students. During the process of weeding, we’ve become even more cognizant of the inefficiencies of the dewey decimal system, and continue to evaluate our collection in order to regroup and shelve books effectively. The next steps include inventorying our collection, (which we think is a better idea than deleting discards), changing call numbers, according to categories, in our circulation system and applying new spine labels. Oh my, and this is just nonfiction. We still plan to shelve fiction according to genre, but in all honesty that may take a while!
As you can see this is a big undertaking. So…if you’d like to help out, come on down to the library. Being part of the process is a good thing and certainly a way to take ownership in what we hope you consider “your” library!
Mrs Schiano
Wow! Did you get a LOT of flack about “throwing away good books?” that was a battle for me. I send you good will in your admirable endeavor. Jo
Wow! An amazing undertaking…
What makes sense to your students?
What are the inefficiencies of Dewey?
Thanks,
Nancy
I’m interested in following you on this adventure. At the Texas Library Association conference in April, I ruffled some feathers when I presented my “genre-fication” of my high school fiction section. I am debating doing something sort of similar in non-fiction.
Can’t wait to see what you’ve done. And I do have some insight on ordering in the future, once you determine your call number system. I’ve worked with my 2 biggest vendors to create very specific specs for each “category” or “genre.” When I put together an order, instead on one list of 200 books, I now may have 6 smaller lists, each identified by the genre name to match those books to the spine label specs. So, I have a list for “Historical Fiction” and every book on that list is referred back to my “Historical Fiction Spec Sheet,” and likewise for the “Fantasy” list and the “Supernatural” list, etc. It takes GOBS more time on my end to prepare an order since I’m basically creating 6 orders and some pretty diligent inside-company reps, but it does work.
Good luck!
Jen
http://www.meanoldlibraryteacher.net
Way to go! You’re going to love it. Let me know how it goes and how the kids like it.
Yes, and we definitely made some mistakes. That’s what happens when you take on a job that should have been done consistently over the past 30 years. The HS library was recently redone and was in the same boat when it came to weeding.They actually got a thumbs down in the local paper. I’m not scared though, I know it’s the right thing to do.
Next post will include categories. Dewey inefficiencies too many to include. Seems like every time we turned around there was something that didn’t make sense. I share pics too so you can see how easy it will be for students now.
Writing next post now. Not done yet, but it’s already awesome! I’m so excited. Thanks big time for leading the way. A great example of the power of social networks and PLN’s!