[LM_NET] Hit: Shelving nonfiction series books

[Mari Ferguson <marivferguson@YAHOO.COM>]

Thank you to everyone who responded!  I am still not
positive how I will arrange my books, thankfully I
will have the summer to think about it.

I hope that I thanked everyone who provided me with a
suggestion, if I forgot you, please accept my apology.

The * indicates the number of responses.

I shelve these books by dewey. **********

I shelve the series together.*****

Additional comments or suggestions

I think the rule is: whatever works best in your
school and with your
students.  anything that makes finding a book easier,
and thus increasing circulation is worth it, in my
opinion.

Pull them occasionally for a special display

I pulled the Magic School Bus books into one section
and then when I ordered the series "You wouldn't want
to..."  I pulled those as well.  I put a different
color sticker on each series on the spine as well, so
they are easily identifiable as "___".  The clientele
for these books is a bit younger and it's harder for
them to find just what they want from the nonfiction
shelves without help.  I left the DK books in DDS
because generally students looking specifically for
them are in the upper elementary grades and I want
them to use the card catalog and find them in DDS. 
It's a judgement call for each librarian to make. 

when I was taking my library classes, a comment a prof
made a comment that went something along the lines
that our libraries should service our patrons.  I took
that literally and rearranged the world!  I grouped
ficton and non-fiction books by series.  I had a
special shelf for these in my fiction section and
blended them in best I could in the non-ficiton
section.  This basically maintained the integrity of
the dewey system.  It was easier for the students to
identify the books they'd read - and they weren't
constantly asking me to track down books for them. 
(As you know, many series are written by groups of
authors which can be difficult for an adult to follow,
much less a 3rd grader).  It was not confusing or
unattractive - and it made my library user friendly. 
Truthfully, it helped me keep up with what I had as
well.  I highly recommend it!

if we have more than 15 books in the collection we put
them on a special shelve above the reference section

I have all my eyewitness together and they fly in and
out.  I even made them their own material type and
call numbers, EYE and the first three letters of the
title.  That way all the kids can find what they want,
and the kids who just like Eyewitness can browse the
collection.

we make sure that they have a series entry in the
online catalog.

I usually ask myself "how will the patron want to use
these?"  With a 
younger audience, they may say "I like ZooBooks!" and
go for zoobooks, 
browsing the set until they see what they like.  In
our high school, 
they will say "I need to write about Sylvia Plath" and
they won't want to 
have "Great Women Writers" shelved as a set, so that
they have to go 
look for Sylvia Plath several places.  They want all
the Sylvia Plath's 
together.  
 
This can be frustrating as many book sets look
beautiful shelved 
together, but in most cases, for older students, I
separate the sets and 
shelve by Dewey Number.  If a set is truly lovely, I
might give it month 
"on display" and then at least some students will get
to enjoy it that 
way.  I do sometimes pull our DK books and put them on
display with a 
sign that says something like "Take a Look at These
Eye-Popping Photos"
 
I don't think there is a right or wrong answer -- but
I try to make it 
best for the users.





Mari Ferguson, K-8 Librarian
Theodore Jamerson Elementary 
Bismarck, ND
marivferguson@yahoo.com

http://sixthessential.blogspot.com/


 
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