What do you do to help with library organization throughout the school year? If you’re anything like most school librarians, you wear many different hats at your school. In addition to being the library media specialist, you might be in charge of the school website, yearbook, or technology equipment. Maybe you’re the Accelerated Reader coordinator or outdoor sign updater. You’re also a book shelver, book repairer, etc. If you don’t have an assistant, this can lead to a lot of stress and chaos. We’ve come up with a few library organization tips to help keep the stress at a minimum level.
Library Helpers
First, consider "employing" several library helpers each year. At the beginning of the school year, have interested 5th-grade students fill out a library helper application. These students have to be willing to come in one day each week during their recess time or another designated period. Ideally, library helpers would help shelve books, but they don't always do a good job, so you can assign them other small tasks like putting barcode stickers on index cards or delivering AR reports to teachers. Any help you can get is good help.
Library Organization for Books
Second, take a good look at how you organize your shelves. How do you organize your shelves? If a collection hasn’t been properly weeded it can be a mess. Do your shelves have so many books crammed on them that students can’t even look for them? Is it impossible to put books away?
Fiction
It’s probably easiest to organize fiction by the author’s last name, but you might want to choose some special shelves just for series of books (like Dan Gutman's My Weird School, 39 Clues, Nancy Drew, Magic Tree House, etc.) so students can quickly find their favorite collections or find new series to love. You could also consider using a special sticker to identify books in a series or popular chapter books to make them easier for students to find. It might also be helpful to have an easy chapter books section for early readers.
Nonfiction
Have you recently looked at the dates of your nonfiction books? Do you have biographies on people who were famous twenty years ago or a pro basketball collection from 1994?
How do you organize your shelves? One librarian told us a horror story of doing a major overhaul of the library one summer and I had a hard time deciding exactly what to do. That school year was her first at this school and inherited a mess, quite frankly. Her guess is that the library hasn't been properly weeded in her lifetime. The Easy collection had so many books crammed on the shelves that the students couldn't even look for a book. Not to mention, books were impossible to put away. While you want students to look beyond a book, remember that nonfiction covers can also often look dated. You could use special stickers or shelf cards to point out popular topics and recent additions to your library as well.
However you choose to organize, you should set aside a bit of time once or twice a year to really go through your collection and clean, weed, and reorganize so things don’t stay out of order. This is especially true if you use student helpers or volunteers to assist with shelving.
Check-Out Procedures
Next, look at your checkout system. You can create your own library checkout cards for students. It’s okay if they are pretty low-tech. Just get on your Library Management Tool, print out barcodes for each student, and stick them onto different colored index cards. Use a different color for each homeroom and keep them in an index card box right beside the scanner so the students can't lose them. You can have the students decorate their cards at the beginning of the school year so it's easier for them to find their cards in the box. This also helps younger students who may not be able to read their names yet. You could even laminate the cards to help them last a little longer.
When students come in for book checkout, they bring their books to the computer and scan their card, then their books. This takes some practice, and the students don't always do it exactly right, but it will buy you a little bit of time to help students find books if you don't have an assistant.
Student Visitors
It can also help to take a look at when students are allowed to visit your library. For example, if your school has open library time, require students to have a library pass to visit. That way you know their teachers have accounted for them. You can give teachers a set of laminated passes. As long as each teacher only has 2-3 passes you can ensure your library won’t be overrun with students. Click here to download our free printable library pass!
Finally, cut down the time you spend planning lessons. You can take time during the summer to do a bulk of the lesson planning or you can use our library lesson plans and resources to save even more time. Look to websites such as TeachersPayTeachers for other templates and resources as well. It may seem expensive, but the more you have prepared in advance and ready to go, the more time you have to work on keeping your library organized and helping students.
What idea can you share that would help everyone as school starts this year? Do you have any suggestions for ways to improve my shelves? How do you deal with elementary library organization problems? Leave your helpful hints in the comments.
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Jena D says
I am currently organizing my library (6-12) like a book store _ by topic_ instead of Dewey Decimal with the help of my local B & N book rep. I have pasted a link of a school who also did this.
http://vanmeterlibraryvoice.blogspot.com/2012/08/we-spiced-up-shelvesand-ditched-dewey.html
Amy Bendall says
For series, I changed all my spine labels to read:
F
ROW
#1
and then placed clear colored label protectors over the spine label (bought from Demco).
If an author has more than one series, I use the colored label protectors to separate them... For example, Erin Hunter's Warrior Series: Warriors (Red Label), Power of Three Series (Orange), Dawn pf the Prophecy (Yellow) , etc
Tess Hoverman says
We have sorted out 90 shelves of series books, 3 complete rows. The kids love having them numbered. We have used a simple label printer like P-Touch to print out numbers which I place on top of the spine. As our series collection has grown, we ordered extra colors so that we keep series subsets together yet tell them apart.
For example, Geronimo Stilton is very popular, but there are Cavemice, Spacemice, Thea Stilton, Creppella, Graphic Novels and more. The main series is numbered with a white label, blue for Thea, green for Spacemice, Yellow for Creepella. When I ran out of colors, I repeat with a 01, 02, etc.
Julie Herr says
I have a question about grouping books by series. We have pulled off the series books but have grouped them by the name of the series instead of the author. It makes it much easier for the kids to find. However, we are at a loss in terms of what to do when an author has more than one series i.e. Rick Riordan. We are a public school library run by parent volunteers. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!
Sarah Story says
You could try to organize by Author's last name (in this case Riordan) and one keyword from the series title. For example, Riordan- PERCY for his Percy Jackson series. Riordan-NATE for his Big Nate Series. Try to pick the work in the title that students will be most likely to remember, such as the name of the main character or an outstanding adjective.
I find that sticking consistently to a method of organization is best no matter who your patrons are. So make sure to be consistent with font and style (i.e. don't use both Riordan-Nate and RIORDAN-PERCY, the font and style make a big difference organization-wise and could potentially confuse some students. Frustration is a big factor in the discouragement of youth education.
Nicole says
I have all my series shelved with the regular fiction books, but I put the series in baskets & typed the complete series & copyright dates on colored paper & laminated each before attaching. It breaks up the look of the shelves because those books are front facing & the labels will help students know the next book in the series.
JoAnne Reed says
I like this basket idea. What size baskets did you use?
Kathy Cowell says
I, too, have done this, but I don't worry about keeping them in any certain order in the baskets. I use various sizes depending on the serie's size. Graphic novels are kept separate in their own display case. I weed as I organize. Smaller series I stand on the shelf where they go for those mannequin shoppers. I also try to stand a duplicate on the top shelf to help students find the series.
Nicole says
I have photos I was going to post, but I am not seeing how to do that. My baskets are just cheap Dollar General baskets - the small baskets were 2/$1 and the large baskets were 1//$1. It has helped my circulation a ton! The students love it, but some long time teachers are not very happy about the change, but they are slowly adjusting. 🙂