Marina,
Boy are you lucky! Empty shelves!
First off, try to leave the top and bottom shelves of any 5 shelf-stacks
empty. If you have adjustable shelves, you might want to make the top shelf
slightly larger to accommodate the oversized books, so you can display them
on the top shelf.
Leaving top & bottom shelves open has two benefits: first, kids are not
climbing the stacks to get at the high books, (& less danger of them
falling on heads) and second, you (or whoever does shelving) are not
spending time squatting to re-shelve or inventory. "Reading" the spines on
the lowest shelf is really hard on the knees & eyes. Third, as your
collection increases, you have room to add and utilize the top or bottoms
if need be. (Think of where you might put a whole new set of books, like
state books, an animal set, or a Native American series, etc., if you
didn't have room?).
Don't worry about leaving too much space on the shelves in use. You can
always pull a book or two from the shelf, then turn them (so they stand
cover forward)and display them. Really makes your library more interesting,
and leaves room for your collection to grow!
Think through carefully where you expect your most "traffic" - sports,
drawing books, and pets are always popular. You might want to reserve an
entire stack (or more) just for sports, then give each major sport its own
shelf (separate baseball, football, basketball, and soccer). This would be
an especially good idea if you plan to shelve the sports biographies on the
sports shelves.
Also, spread out your biography section if possible. If you can have one
shelf for A's, another for B's, etc. you will have more room for display on
the shelf. Rotate the books on display once a month. Even if kids aren't
interested in biographies, seeing the FACES and the NAMES of the people at
least exposes them to some level of awareness, and perhaps even interest.
Probably about 20 shelves will do it since some letters (I,Q,U,XYZ) will
most likely be able to share a shelf with their neighboring letter. Don't
forget a stack for your Collected Biography books. Display a lot of these
since kids won't know who's featured in them except by the pictures on the
cover. By the way, the (collected biography) book with Lucille Ball, along
with her individual biography, was one of our most requested books!
Leave lots of room in the 300's and have an expanded area of folk and fairy
tales. Leave lots of room on the 500's since earth sciences and plant and
animal life are always of interest and fill many curriculum needs. Leave
extra room for any area that your school "specializes" in - for example,
visual arts, leave more room in 700's for art books.
If you have a large separate area for your primary kids, you can use 3
shelf stacks this way:
Measure down about 15" from the top for your first shelf, then 15" more for
your second shelf. Use the top shelves all the way across for your easy
nonfiction books, the second shelves all the way across for your easy
fiction. (Put nonfiction on top to make it easier to re-shelve). 15" should
give you enough room to shelve nearly all picture books upright. You can
use the very lowest shelf for any oversized books bigger than 15" (lay them
lengthwise).
If you use Follett as your main vendor, they will divide the easy fiction
in your order and assign it a call number E followed by the Dewey #, if you
request this. They are pretty accurate on this - when I did an opening day
collection this way in 1997, there were only a few I felt needed changing.
I used a colored spine overlay to distinguish E nonfiction from upper grade
(3rd and above)nonfiction. Worked fine, & worth the extra effort.
If you still have some open areas on your 5 shelf-stacks, you can leave an
open area at the top large enough for a large poster, with a shelf just
below the poster. For example, you could put a "Mystery" poster up, then
display some mysteries on the shelves below the poster. Use the gummy
tack-up stuff and be sure your posters are laminated.
Before shelving anything, I did a paper layout of all the shelves, and
penciled in what I expected to put on them (like 398 - 398.2; A - D; 398.2
E - H, etc.). We had all the books in boxes (about one box per shelf)so we
had a good idea of how the arrangement would work before we physically put
the books in place. We had to re-locate very few shelves this way.
PLAN AHEAD - be sure your contract calls for the shelving installer to put
in the shelves for you at the heights you specify, especially if they are
heavy wood shelves. You will be very surprised at how hard (and
time-consuming)this is, and how difficult some of the new holes are to
insert the pegs! (We had to bang many of ours in with the handle end of a
fat screwdriver!) You will be exhausted if you do it all yourself! If they
won't put up the shelves, then at least have them place the appropriate
number of shelves at the bottom of the stack in the right direction so you
can then put the pegs and lift & tip the shelves up into place - don't try
to haul them around.
Hope this is helpful!
Joanne Ladewig, Library Aide (A.K.A. "Library Lady")
Lawrence Elementary, G.G.U.S.D.
Garden Grove, California
shatz1@earthlink.net
---comments are my own and may not reflect those of my employer- - -
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