Tales of the White Board

This was our white board today.  The return from Spring Break seemed like a natural time to talk about how far we've come (and how far we have to go!).

White Board Messge

Catching up with my white board postings. This one is from a couple months back.

The End (almost)

We read this today.  My littles loved this one.  But I have a question.  Who names their bear Donut?  Jim Benton, that's who!

Ninja Red Riding Hood

We read this today. It was a hit from K all the way up to my 6th graders.  That doesn't happen very often.  I love the rhyme scheme.  It rhymes without becoming sing-song half-way through!

A good addition to our library.

My White Board (aka how I communicate to the school)

At my old school I had a large white board on wheels that sat at the entrance to my library.  I used to put notices and funny sayings each day.  I would let them know if they could come in and check out books, if there were special things going on in the library, if there were deadlines they needed to know about, etc.  I also introduced each day with an alliterative phrase - "Today is Marvelous Monday!"  "Today is Terrific Tuesday" "Today is Thankful Thursday!"  I add cartoon pictures or decorations.  The kids (and the staff) love it. 

When I moved to my new school, I didn't have one.  At first, I was too overwhelmed with just figuring out what the heck I was doing to miss it(I moved in the middle of the year, in the middle of the week. I literally hit the ground running!).  But after I got my bearings, I really wanted that sign back!

Turns out that my new school had a brand new, fancy schmancy white board that they bought for staff meetings. It hadn't been used yet and was being stored in the back of an unused classroom.  Could I store it in the library and use it for my message board? Why yes, I can!

So now I write my messages and draw my pictures and I'm happy again.  I will be posting pictures of my various boards.

The Mrs. Moss Zone

This is the Mrs. Moss Zone!  What, you ask, is the Mrs. Moss Zone?  Well, I'm glad you asked!

At my old school I had the Mrs. Moss's Favorites Cart.  A small cart with books that I had read that I thought were good books for kids.  The ones that I think will appeal to a large section of kids.  I try to include a lot of different genres and reading levels.  Those books were very popular.  I liked having a cart of recommendations.  When kids would ask me for book recommendations, I had a cart full of books I liked and thought kids would like. I would walk kids over to the "Mrs. Moss's Favorites Cart" often to look for good books.  It made it easy for me.  Because of this, I wanted to carry on the tradition at my new school.

When I got here, I realized there was no place to park a cart on a permanent basis.  I did, however, have this shelf which used to house the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.  Those books will circulate no matter where I put them so I shelved them back with the fiction books.  I took that shelf and put my Mrs. Moss's Favorites on it.  I had chapter books on display on the top shelf.

Then I had an epiphany!  I often have kids ask for "that book you read to us last week."  That usually means three weeks ago and I can't always remember what book I read to what grade level.  I always wished I had a place to display my past read aloud books.  While moving some other books around, I ended up with a small display shelf with no home.  I looked at it, then looked at the top shelf of this bookcase and thought - Hey!  You should use this to display your read alouds!

The bulletin board above it seemed perfect for sign to acknowledge what this space is.  The Mrs. Moss Zone popped into my head and it has stuck.

Genrefication - why?

I have decided to "genrefy" my library.  And, I hate that spell check does not recognize that word!

First, what does it mean to genrefy? What is genrefication?  Basically, it just means to organize your library by genre.  Some people do this just to their fiction sections.  Some to their whole library.
Some of you might ask, "But isn't that what the Dewey Decimal system does?"  Well, yes it does.  Sort of.  Which leads us to the "why?" of genrefication.

The Dewey Decimal system is a fabulous way of organizing books and it has proven effective for many, many years.  But there are some flaws in the system.  For example, some of the books about the Titanic are found in the 300's, others are in the 900's.  Books about the branches of the military are in the 358's but books about military vehicles are in the 627's and books about wars are in the 900's.   Mammals are in the 599's, unless they are domesticated animals and then they are in the "science and technology" section in the 636's. And in the fiction section, all books are shelved alphabetically by the first three letters of the author's last name regardless of what the book is about.  All of this makes it confusing for kids and not very intuitive for adults.  When you go into a book store,  you look in the section that has the books you like.  A mystery fan? You go look in the mystery section.  A romance lover? You go to the romance section.  Why doesn't it work that way in libraries?

So, some libraries are making the change to genrefication.  It is much more straight forward for kids.  They can find the kind of books that they like.  Most librarians find that their circulation numbers go up after they genrefy because kids can browse in the section of books that they are most likely to read.

There are concerns, of course.  Shouldn't we be teaching the kids Dewey so that they will be able to find their way around other libraries?  Yes, we probably should, which is why I am not going to do my non-fiction section.  Yet.  What about authors that write in many genres, how will kids find their books?  If a student is interested in reading a particular authors work, they can still look them up in the on-line catalog and find what genre sections those books are in.  It may be a little more difficult than before but still doable.  However, finding all the mystery books, regardless of author, will be much easier.  Most of the time my students want a particular kind of book, not a particular author. My fellow library ladies in my district had questions about how it would affect them when they want to borrow a book.  When looking up a book by title or by subject, or even by author, it will work the same way as before.  Just the call number will be different.  Since I will be the one pulling books it only affects me.

I did a lot of research on this topic before I made this decision.  I'm still a little scared but mostly I'm excited.  It is going to be a lot of work.  I'll post updates so you can see how I'm doing it.