TARGET--Organization of elementary libraries

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Thank you to everyone who responded. There was a lot of uniformity in the
replies. Most lower elementary libraries had the following collections:
   Picture or Easy/Everybody Books
   Fiction
   Nonfiction
   Reference
   Biography (not all indicated a separate section for biography)

Many label the nonfiction shelves with pictures depicting the subject
matter.

Many label the fiction books with spine labels indicating the content
(sports, animals etc.)

Your responses are most appreciated and will help me enormously.

One reply was so interesting that I will try to print it in its entirety.


It just came to me while reading your question one reason I love LM_NET.  It
allows me to get on my favorite soap boxes.  After three years in two
different elementary libraries I have some strong opinions on the subject.
My key word is ACCESS.  I try to organize my library so the kids have as
much access, hopefully independently, as possible.  In my observation, the
way we organize our collections traditionally is lousy for young children.
The last thing most kids care about is who wrote a book. They care about the
subject matter, the pictures, the readability, is it funny or scary. So we
arrange our fiction by author's last name.

Nonfiction is a bit better. There at least you can find something by
subject. But Dewey is generally unworkable until 3rd or 4th grade and pretty
laborious until around 6th. The cognitive skills just aren't there for
searching card catalogs and on shelves for three digit numbers frequently
involving decimals. So to start with we've got a system that is not
accessible to children. Hence the "special" collections. I have a picture
book section (which I stress to everyone through 8th grade is NOT the easy
books, as many of them have rairly high reading levels). I also have an easy
reader section. If I had the time and the help, I'd do what Jan Hoffman did
at the Common School in Amherst, Mass. She reclassified all her picture
books into child-friendly catagories (ex: alphabets, creatures, families and
friends, holidays and birthdays, no words, real animals, things that go. She
has 25 categories in all). I have one in my picture books, books marked by a
little ghost sticker. So many kids ask for scary stories that I have marked
"Where the Wild Things Are" and "There's a Nightmare in My Closet" and
similar books with the ghost. I teach the kids to hunt for the ghost
stickers.

The Dewey I tacked the second year I taught in a library. I observed that
the nonfiction for K-2 rarely circulated. So I created a system modeled
after a system a librarian at the Shrewsbury Public Library invented. I made
Dewey "clumps", subject areas that are useable by young children, gave each
a title and a picture (silhouette) that is easily recognizable. Folk and
Fairy Tales (398) have a dragon, 610s are titled My Body and have a child
with outstretched arms. And of course a dinosaur section with a
brontosaurus. (For anyone sho is interested, I's be glad to go into further
detail.) The result was that circulation of these books tripled and we had
mob scenes in the nonfiction. I call it Picture Nonfiction.

I have heard librarians argue that if you separate picture and easy reader,
you stigmatize the older child who wants to read them. First off, if you
don't separate picture and easy readers, the younger kids who need them
first won't be able to find them, and secondly, it is fairly easy to break
down the idea that picture books are for little kids. Just read "The True
Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf" to a 6th or 7th grader. They'll
get the point. I do picture book promos to my older classes a lot. And I
point out that reading to younger kids is a very special thing to do.

If I could design an elementary school library, I wouldn't have the picture
books on shelves with only their spines visable. I'd have bins so the kids
could flip through the books and judge what they wanted by the cover. I try
to display (stand up on the shelves) as many picture books as I can. Most
kids select from the displayed books. Even when they can read, titles on
spines do not stir them. My next goal is to get some good display racks and
do theme displays.

Much more has been done on making nonfiction sections accessible with signs
for the popular sections, signs on the ends of the shelves. I color code my
sections (fiction, nonfiction, reference, biography and picture) and any
time a kid asks for a book, walk them throught how to find it using the
signs. Jan Hoffman (see picture books) also invented a very kid-oriented
classification system, one that uses colors and one-digit numbers. It's a
system that makes sense to the kids, so they not only learn how to use it
easily, but they can also figure out how to classify a book and learning
other classification systems (like Dewey at their local public library) is
easy because they understand the logic of one system. Dewey has so many
things that don't make sense, starting with "Fiction" and "Nonfiction" which
my kids persist in calling not-true and true. So what do I do with fairy
tales? and poetry? Plus that numbering system (and where some subjects are
put) does not correspond to the way kids see the world.

Enough! We are stuck with Dewey, for the most part. Our challenge is to
adapt and put up signs and teach so that our kids can find what they want.
The goal is to make readers, kids who love reading.

Johanna Halbeisen, LMS                We are confronted by
Rebecca M. Johnson School (k-8)         insurmountable opportunities.
Springfiled, Mass                                        Pogo
jhalbei@k12.ucs.umass.edu