
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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I work in an elementary school library. We have many intermediate students (grades 3-5) who really need to find just right books in the early chapter or easy chapter books. I'd like to change the name of these chapter books so that ALL students will use these books more and to remove any stigma for older struggling readers.
I know I'm late getting in on this topic but I just became our grade K-2 media center specialist. I took over at the beginning of March. I'm trying to reorganize to make things easier and I love that I found these ideas!
My school is in the process of a complete remodel and addition. Right now we're in that phase where I have to know how I'm organizing my library for next year. I have freedom to create/organize in most any way I'd like, including the shelving. I'd love any ideas/dreams for how you would organize your books from the ground up. We've already got the nooks and caves built in, so this is just the books I'm inquiring about.
I am in the same boat as you, J. I just got brand new shelves yesterday that are all mobile. The shelves that are not mobile will be removed this summer and new carpet will be installed. This is my first year in the media center, so I am in need of some ideas on how to arrange everything!
Setting goals is GOOD advice! I walked into our PreK thru 8 library last year and found a mess of disorganization and overcrowding. The library hadn't been properly weeded in about 10 years, and the average age of our books was 1974!
Shelf reading with your shelf list first puts the books in proper order.
Determining which books are mis-cataloged is a challenge but needs to be done. Shelf reading helps with finding those books.
Shelf reading time is a good time for weeding. Your shelf list should include the copyright date and number of times the book has circulated. Also look for copies that are just plain worn out and need to be replaced.
Separating long series (4 or more books) from the general collection is helpful.
Since we have such a wide range of ages at our school, we've also determined that we need a special section JUST for middle school students, those books that are not appropriate for, say, a fourth grader or younger. (Parents requested this, happy to oblige.)
My rule of thumb: Every shelf should have empty space on it. (Of course this depends on how much space you have.) Room to add new books, room to move things around easily, room to set items of interest that go with the books.)
Invest in all kinds of special labels: AR with reading levels indicated, genre identifiers, interest levels, etc. Not ALL books need special labels, but they do help with special books.
I am a high school librarian and like everyone above I came into a mess and decided the first thing I was going to do was paint and rearrange the shelves to at least get us in compliance with handicap laws. I packed all the books up and started that process and as I was putting the books back on the shelves I ended up re-cataloging books because they had never been cataloged when put out. I did what Amy Bendall above did and the teachers and students loved it. And all books are AR labeled. It's a lot of work but so worth it. Am I done heck no I tell everyone "it's a work in progress". Set a goal for the year and work for that.