March Events in the Library

It is a rainy month around here so we have to create some fun indoors. Typically I do three promotions in the library during the month of March: Jane Austen Week; Lucky Day Books; and March Madness (basketball.) So far two of these promotions are set up and going.

 1. Lucky Day Books- I stole this idea from my public library and modified it. They have a shelf called Lucky Day books that patrons can check out if they are physically at the library but one can't place a hold on them.  It is just your Lucky Day if you bump into these "hot" books that particular day. My modification---I walked the library and looked for popular, high demand or high interest books. Placing a green shamrock book mark in them identifies them as Lucky Day books. If a student checks one out, we ask them to write their name on the book mark and we keep it. At the end of the month I will host a drawing for a free book or some other bookish prizes.

Insurgent, the 2nd book of the Divergent series is a good example of a Lucky Day book. This book just happened to come back yesterday when I made the display.

Even though I have a sign explaining the "rules" we still have to tell students about them because they aren't great at noticing my signage.

2. Jane Austen Week...next to my Mock Printz Workshop, Jane Austen week is my favorite event of the year. The specifics: 1. Students sign up so that they are allowed to bring their lunches to the library on the days of the event. 2. A Jane Austen movie is shown all five days of the week during lunch time. (I show the same segment three times each day because we have three lunches.) I never reveal the movie ahead of time.They find out the first day of the event. 3. Students earn points for checking out Jane Austen books, or Jane Austen-ish/retelling books; for answering J.A. trivia questions; for attendance.

4. Students with the winning number of points (one per lunch period and a grand prize winner) win J.A. paraphernalia or books. The Grand Prize is often a china tea cup or something extra special. 

Being a Janeite myself I made sure that there are lots of Jane Austen books/retellings in my collection, including Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the Sense and Sensibility graphic novel.

The opposite side of the sign says "Jane Austen Retellings." The blue sheet outlines the point system.

Display case outside library is stuffed with Jane Austen items, including a P and P trivia game, A Jane Austen action figure, and paper dolls.

Close up of the display case.

3. March Madness...the Jane Austen event is decidedly a more girl activity, although I usually have a few boys who join us for the movie. March Madness, on the other hand tends to tend in the male direction. A display of basketball books and a MAP activity accompany all the National attention and hype for the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Our local newspaper usually sends me a USA map and stickers onto which we keep track of the teams in the tournament and their progress. Unfortunately for us on the West Coast few teams usually make the tournament so only hard-core basketball fans stay interested throughout. Plus it always ends when we are on Spring Break making the activity fizzle. But it is fun while it is going.

Libraries 101: Adventures in "weeding"

Weeding definition: 

Weeding is the removing of materials from 

a library collection in a systematic and 

deliberate way. It is an ongoing part of 

collection development, a planned and 

thoughtful action that will ensure library 

materials are current and enticing.

-California Department of Educaiton

Every school year we are required to inventory our whole school  library, all the school's technology, and the textbook repository. It is a big job. But every year it gets easier IF we are organized the year before. This year, as usual, I am using my inventory time as an opportunity to also weed the library of old, out-of-date, undesirable, or inappropriate books. Here are a few of this year's highlights (lowlights) I call Adventures in Weeding:

• I moved all the reference materials in amongst the regular nonfiction. The Reference section was never used and this way students will possibly use the materials if they see them among the other books on their research topic. This was a huge task because it required that I move nearly all the nonfiction books to reconfigure the space required. It took me weeks and required a trip or two to the chiropractor.  While sorting through books I weeded out eight boxes of dated materials.
• Students like to hide things behind the books.  Last year I found a carton of milk 3 months out of date.  It was very swollen, but fortunately hadn't burst. This year I found an orange which was shrunk down to 1/4th its normal size and a huge glob of chewing tobacco. You know that stuff wasn't just inadvertently placed there.  Ugh.
• When my library opened someone decided to place the barcodes on the back of the books on the right corner and I didn't know any better to stop them.  Bad idea. The barcodes obscure the information about the plot on over half the books.  See photo. As I inventory a section I also put aside books with obscuring barcodes and reposition them. I work on that task when I can't be out in the library scanning titles because I have to work the circulation desk. It slows thing down, but I keep reminding myself how nice things will be next year.

See how the barcodes obscure the blurb on the back of the book? Talk about irritating. I am now attempting to reposition these barcodes but it is a big job and takes a lot of time.

• The gal who selected my opening day collection was a big Sci-Fi and Fantasy fan so she ordered a lot of these genres. As I move along through the shelves I started noticing books in a series, many I have no idea which books comes first. I pull them out and set them aside for a little extra research.  If I don't have sequential books in a series, they get weeded. Today I found two books from one series, the first and the nineteenth. My library has been open for eight years and I finally noticed. Shame on me.  Instead of adding the missing books, out these two go.
• I have no idea what to do when famous author's works seem dated.  Please offer your advice.  For example today I scanned a book by Robert Heinlein, a famous Sci-Fi author.  The blurb on the back of the book talked about time travel back from the year 2000.  Wait, did I read that right? Year 2000? I checked the copyright date, 1957. Ah, no wonder 2000 seemed so far in the future.  But won't this be a turnoff for students who were just toddlers in 2000.  What would you do? Weed or no?
• May Contest.  While scanning booksfor the inventory I notice titles that haven't circulated for a while (or ever.) These books should be culprits for immediate dismissal (weeded.) However, many of them are in great shape and look interesting so I decided to host a little contest.  These lowly books are now displayed on the top of the shelves with orange bookmarks   If students check out one of these "special" books they are entered into the May contest. Prizes will be awarded to ten or so students at the end of the month.  So far around 50 of these books have circulated and it is only May 9th, so I should triple that number. And I think I've found a series that is going to be really popular with the hunting/fishing type of boy. It has been hiding on the shelves all these years. Score! 
• Please share your adventures in weeding in the comment section.
• May your library garden grow strong and beautiful now that it is weed free!

Teacher-Librarians---The Heart of Student Learning

This video makes me proud to be a teacher-librarian in the State of Washington. Take a look and pat yourself on the back if you agree that libraries are the heart of your school.

Today two Math teachers dropped by my library and told me that our library is "the bridge of the starship." I agree proudly!

 Washington Library Media Association.

 

Libraries 101..Sorry Dewey

Several years ago, when my daughters were young, we went to the public library to look for American Girls books.  Each of the girls had an American Girl doll and they enjoyed reading the books about their particular doll. Each doll had a set of six books written about them. At the library I had to use the card catalog to locate each of the six books which were located throughout the Junior fiction section because the books were written by different authors.  The children's librarian on duty didn't have any pity on us because they had a strict policy of shelving books correctly according to the Dewey Decimal system. They also had rules about shelving fiction according to the author of the book. She understood that it was a hassle and confusing, but the kids should learn to navigate the catalog to locate the books they want.

That lesson really stuck in my craw.  Shouldn't we think about patrons when we organize our libraries? Years later when I went to school to become a librarian and then got my own library, I was confronted with the same issue. It took me several years but I finally decided that patrons ease of use was more important that rules set up by Dewey years ago.

The issue came to the forefront when I had several classes in the library doing project on immigration.  My books on the subject were located in both the 300s (social issues) and the 973s (US History). I spent my whole day running back and forth, finally pulling all the books and placing them side by side on the top of a shelf making them more accessible for everyone. When the classes were finished with their projects I shelved the books in their proper locations in the 300s and 900s. A few days later kids, who hadn't finished the project on time, started trickling in wanting to locate the books they needed.  Once again I spent several days running back and forth between the two sections before I decided that Dewey was not going to send out the library police if I re-cataloged the books and put them together in one spot. Now I can walk kids and teachers and point to one location for all the immigration books.

All my immigration books in one spot in the library.

In order to do this I had to recatolog the whole lot.  I found a section of the 300s between 312 and 318 where I had no books at all.  I assigned new dewey numbers to everything so that I could
get country books next to each other, too. Admittedly it took a bit of time and effort but it was worth it.

Since then I have done the same thing with the drug books, assigning all of them 362.29 numbers even if the assigned Dewey number meant the book should have been shelved with health issues in the 600s. I decided it made more sense to batch them all together in one spot.  Kids don't care if books in 362.29 should be books about scoial issues related to drug use and the ones in the 600s are more about the health issues related to use.  They just know that they can walk to one spot to see if I have what they are looking for.

Even the fiction section of the library has received my scrutiny.  First, I took all the books by Orca Book Publishing and put them together in one spot.  These books are geared toward reluctant readers and are designed to be high interest but low reading levels.  I talked to the Special Education teachers and they all agreed that it would work best if we just called these books Orca Books (rather than Hi-Low Books) and they should be placed together somewhere for easy assess. I even put ORCA instead of FIC (short for fiction) on the spine label so that my TAs would know where to shelf them. This has been a huge success.  The SPED teachers send kids up from their classrooms to get another ORCA book. The kids all know exactly where they are and don't require my help in locating them.  By the way, I am a huge fan of Orca books.  If you aren't familiar with this publishing company check them out. (Orca Book Publishing.)

Books about Halo all shelved together by title, not author.

Secondly, I took all of the Halo books that are so popular with boys that are in the XBox game and placed them in one spot, re-cataloging them as FIC HAL (for the title, not the author.) I decided to do this to undo the frustration over the American Girls book at the public library. I'm sure that the authors of the various books don't care where I put the books in my library, just that kids still want to read their books.

This summer I hope to tackle another issue...biographies verses subject matter. But that is a blog for another day.

I hope Dewey doesn't mind.

What frustrates you when you go looking for books on a topic at a library? If you are a librarian, have you done any similar fixes?  Please share your thoughts and ideas.


 

Libraries 101...Books in a series

Libraries 101 is a new feature at My Head is Full of Books where librarians and library-goers can talk about issues near and dear---books and bookish related topics specific to libraries.

Today's topic is books in a series.

Any teen librarian today has to be on his/her toes constantly just to stay one step ahead of the teens' insatiable desire for the next book in a favorite series. I could never keep them straight. Constantly feeling overwhelmed and confused I resorted to creating a few tricks to help me stay sane and to look like I knew what I was doing.

1. First I started purchasing two or three copies of the first book in a series so that more kids could be introduced to the popular series without being thwarted before they had a chance to start.

1.1.1.2.2.3.4...

2. Next I created a little blue notebook into which I write out the list of books in particular series, and if I know them, the dates of upcoming books. This little notebook is now a go-to spot for my ardent library readers. One girl even complimented me on it just this past week. "This is the coolest book. I've never seen one in any other library." Of course, the information is available on the card catalog, but that requires several steps in our school system to login and get to the catalog.  This is faster. Not a day goes by that someone, including my clerk, doesn't consult the little Books in a Series book.

This small three-ring binder sits on the circulation desk so that anyone can use it.

Pages are sorted by author, titles are added as new books are published.

A post-it note announces up-coming titles.

3. Another issue with books in a series is how to communicate to the reader that there is another book in the series.  As you know from my last post, I am not a great fan of stickers, so I always struggle with how to communicate with readers so that they will know to look for the next book. Obviously if the kid drops by the circulation desk we would tell them, but frequently that didn't happen so I decided to start displaying books in a series on a shelf in my library.  Post-it notes help us indicate each books' number in the series. Series are rotated onto and off the shelf monthly. This has been a very popular move. Kids flock to the shelf and find that next book themselves.  Often they tell me that they loved the first book but didn't even know that there were other books after it. Success!

All books in the series are marked with post-it notes.

A variety of types of series are highlighted: fantasy, paranormal, realistic, etc.

If books in a series don't move, they are reshelved and others replace them to keep the display fresh.

4. For very popular series, notices on the library bulletin board announce the arrival of the next book in a series.  House of Night. Inheritance Cycle. The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. Hunger Games.


What do you find helpful in identifying the next book in the series?  Join in the conversation.

 

Libraries 101---Stickers

Libraries 101 is a new feature at My Head is Full of Books where librarians and library-goers can talk about issues near and dear---books and bookish related topics specific to libraries.

Today's topic is stickers on books, such as barcodes, due date stickers, and spine labels.

I became a school librarian seven years ago.  I opened a new school and its library.  I was not, however, the person that chose the opening day collection or made the decisions about the placement of barcode labels. Nor did I select the type of books predominately selected for this collection, paperbacks with special hard covers to extend their shelf life. While I like these types of books, what I don't like is that the information about the book is on the back because they don't have a jacket flap. The placement of the barcode label can then obscure the book info.  Students complain that they have no idea what the book is about which makes selection of this particular title less than likely. See the photo below for three examples of labels that do this.

Barcode labels, due date labels, and spine labels all obscure the information on the back of the book on these Permabound-type books.

The problem with extra stickers isn't as profound on hardcover books since the book info is on the book-flap inside the front cover, but they do make the books look more junky and, in some cases, obscure some of the book info.  See examples below.

For the past few months whenever I have a few free hours, I've been attempting to remedy my sticker problem by slowly removing the due date stickers on the back and replacing them with due date sheets which are glued inside the book.

Several students have commented how much better they like this type of due date label.  They say it is easier to figure out when the book is due and it looks less messy on the back of the book.

In addition I am slowly removing the AR labels that are above the spine labels.  The gal that selected the opening collection thought that high school students would want to participate in Accelerated Readers activities.  They don't.  The AR stickers on the spines confuse kids who are searching for a particular book. I am also moving all barcode labels to some place on the back of the book that doesn't obscure any information.  This a huge job and it will probably take me a few years to finish.

Words to the wise---If I could do it again, I would avoid as many stickers as possible on my books and the placement of the barcodes would vary according to the information already published on the book. 

Librarians and library-goers what are your thoughts about stickers on library books?