A welcome addition to library shelf signage

We have added additional signage in our library to help students, staff, and parents find popular book series.  Each row of JF books now has four series listed on the front of the shelves so that people can find books more easily.  For the time being, we're limiting the list to four for each row so there is no "signage clutter."  In deciding which books to showcase, we listened to what books most kids were requesting most often.  It is hoped that kids will be able to find books more easily, and this will also give kids more ideas of books to take out if they need extra help.

We embossed and bolded the font to make it stand out more, and played around with color schemes, shapes, and sizes for pictures and fonts.  In addition to these signs, we have chosen Calibri (sans-serif) and Cambria (serif) as our official library fonts for signage, hand outs, etc. - helping us to make the library more cohesive.  We are adding multiple colors to walls, purchasing bright tables, and creating lively displays also, so it's ok to have a little uniformity somewhere too in this regard. :)

New shelf signage helps kids finds books more easily.

What's best is that each sign has a picture related to the series (character, logo, etc.).  This adds more visual appeal to the library, and especially with some of our younger kids or ESL readers helps them find books they are more able to identify based on visuals. 

We did these signs with blue borders since our designated JF section is blue.  We hope that kids who struggle with the concept of categories or the difference between fiction and non-fiction will find the color-coding helpful.  One of our big upcoming projects will also now be to color code the call numbers.  All the JF books will say ‘JF’ in blue for example.  It adds color, makes books easier to shelf read for staff, and reinforces in students’ minds that these books go together.     

Kids have responded positively to the signs and have demonstrated more confidence in selecting popular books they'd like to read.  It also gives them more time to explore other books or ask us for suggestions and help.  

We plan to do all of the above with the non-fiction next, which currently has no extra signage other than the new big red call numbers that we added.  We will highlight 4-5 key subjects (popular and/or tied to curriculum units) for each row of books (once again not too much "signage clutter," giving us about 30 shelf signs in non-fiction.  For outerspace - we can put a picture of Saturn, for plants – we can put a flower, and so on.  We will use red borders since we have chosen red as our non-fiction color.  

Facebook library page

Our Facebook Photo

We have created a Facebook page for our library, and are very excited for parents and staff to begin visiting our site.  We now have over 25 people who like the page, a number required to give the organization/club an officially recognized name on Facebook (making it also much more easy for people to find you because you get an easier URL).  Because of Facebook regulations, the page is not intended for elementary school students, but rather to inform stakeholders in their education about library services and resources. 

As some schools have chosen to host Facebook pages and some have not, we went through the school administration first to discuss the idea of having a Facebook page before publicizing our new online space.  To make sure that the page is successful and enjoyable, we have set strong privacy settings.  For example, people may not tag photos, and if anybody comments on the page I receive an email message so I can check what was written.  We are using the page for information dissemination only - primarily for letting people know about upcoming events, new books, reading tips, and more.  We also plan to put more photos of our library up on the site (of the space and staff only, not students) to let them know about what we are doing and to encourage them to come in more frequently to the library.   

I made cards for the circulation desk with our Facebook URL.  When new patrons get their library numbers, we are using these cards to write their numbers down.  That way they get reminded to check out our Facebook site when they retrieve their library numbers in the future. 

I am a big advocate of using social media to get information out there as much as possible.  Facebook, like any other social media tool, has the potential to connect people to what we do, and I want our library to be a part of people’s regular routine.    

Decor

We would like to make the library even more welcoming!  We currently have white walls with brown shelves and a blue carpet, which is unfortunately not a very exciting combination for our elementary library.  I met with the Facilities Management people to inquire as to whether or not we could spruce it up a bit, and they said yes!  Our principal and director support the idea of making the space as inviting as possible, and it's exciting to work on this aspect of the library as well.  In addition to the resources, programming, and staff, libraries are also about the space itself.

I want to create something that is colorful, but that is not too busy either.  I want it to look professional and fun at the same time.  I would love it to cool people down from the heat outside, but not be too cold.  A lot of things to consider!  After a lot of thought, here is what I came up with for our painting project.  

Note: Unfortunately, I cannot get the two halves to be combined here for you to view, but note that part 1 and part 2 form one continual line of color.  Each horizontal white box represents a window.  This is an extremely long wall with 14 good-size windows, and is the wall you see first when you walk in the library (opposite the main door).

Part 1: Left side

Part 2: Right side

This will be the wall with the most color, but we will be adding touches of color to other parts of the library also, including warm yellow in one location.  We will be repeating the salmon color in between the windows on columns elsewhere in the library as well.  

We will put photos up once the painting is done of course, but this is something to whet your appetite for the time being.

Student and professional magazines

We subscribe to the following magazines for elementary students:

American Girl, Cobblestone, Highlights, Kids Discover, National Geographic Kids, Owl, Ranger Rick, Sports Illustrated Kids, Zoo Books

And, these are our professional publication subscriptions:

Classroom Skill Builders: Teacher’s Helper (Levels: Kindergarten to Intermediate), Junior Scholastic, Mailbox (Levels: Pre-school to Intermediate), The Reading Teacher, Scholastic Instructor, Social Studies and the Young Learner, Teaching Children Mathematics

I noticed that students have not really been checking out magazines, or even taking a look at them in the library.  Taking a closer look myself, I noticed that this section of the library could use some help, so today I worked on making the magazine section more attractive. 

When we moved the professional development section to its current location a couple weeks ago, we put it next to the professional periodicals.  This kept all of the professional materials in one spot – a great plus for teachers.  It also had an added bonus.  The student magazines had been in this spot.  By separating kids magazines from professional periodicals, this meant that kids were no longer confused as to whether they were looking at a magazine for kids or adults (some of the adult covers like “Teacher’s Helper” have drawings that are more cartoon-like).  Of course, this now meant that we had to find a new location for the student magazines (more on that a little later).

We went through all our magazines (both student and professional) and decided to keep any back issues from January 2009 onwards.  Because interest stories change frequently (popular athletes, trends, discoveries, new best practices…), we wanted to keep our issues fairly current.  There were magazines from 1995 in some of the bins, something not very inviting to a student who would only be born a few years later.  In addition, we got rid of tattered magazines.  We weeded 2/3 of our magazines, and gave these to classrooms since teachers had expressed interest in having magazines to cut up for collages.   It was a win-win for everybody – a cleaner magazine area with more up-to-date issues and materials that other classes could use.

Magazines were in bins of different colors, sizes, and styles.  By weeding out 2/3 of the magazines and organizing what remained, I no longer needed all the bins and had enough of the same color and style to put the remaining magazines in.  This made it look professional.  Because I wanted to facilitate patrons being able to find magazines quickly, I typed signs to put on the front of the bins and laminated them for durability.  Each magazine is written in a different color, not only to add a little more pizzazz to the section, but to help kids identify their favorite magazines more quickly. 

Our magazine shelf's new, organized look

So, where did we end up putting the student magazines then?...next to the reference section.  The reference section (encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, certain specialty books) don’t get used as much as we’d love them to, so by now generating more interest around the magazines and having the reference section be right there too, the magazines also sort of serve as a small lure to that area.  Once the magazines were in their new location, we brought each class during library time over to show students where the magazines are and what we have.  I have noticed more kids using the section now because they are able to find issues that interest them more easily.     

Scholastic book fair

Books set up in our school courtyard for the fair

Today we are having our last day of the Scholastic Book Fair, and have designed the schedule to coincide with Back to School Night tonight so that parents can also have more access to the fair.  I always enjoyed these as a kid, and especially love them as a librarian because I get to see tons of kids excited about books!  Our fall book fair runs three days and I set up a calendar for our 33 elementary classes to go so that everybody can enjoy this great experience.  

We originally planned to hold the book fair outside in our courtyard during the full three days, but since the rains are coming, we feared that the books might get wet.  We moved inside to our rain day location (black box theater) for the first two days, but due to a schedule conflict with another event in the black box on the last day, we moved it back outside on day three and kept our fingers crossed to wish away any potential rain.  Our wishing paid off because it was a gorgeous day! To have all the books out in our beautiful courtyard was super fun and gave everyone much more room as well to peruse books.

More and more books!...Which one(s) are you going to buy?

We decided to make the book fair even more special by creating a huge bookworm to go around the courtyard (unfortunately no photos of this came out).  Each student designed a part of the bookworm's body by drawing and/or writing about his or her favorite book.  This was a colorful way to make the event more festive and to generate excitement for books in general.  

The Scholastic people were very friendly and helped with the book displays, running the cash desk, etc.  We cannot wait for the next book fair! Now what to do with all those points? Time to go book shopping! :)

Call number signage

Now that we have repositioned our shelves and moved books to their new locations, it is time to create our call number signage.  Many of the bookshelves do not have call number signage, especially in non-fiction, so the addition of signage is sure to be met with a lot of welcome!  We want to help our patrons become comfortable in their search for information, so they need to be able to find resources on the shelves once they have found a book of interest in the computer.  If they find a chapter book with the call number JF (junior fiction), but do not know where the JF books are, then it will be harder for them to find the book for instance.

Elementary non-fiction (ENF) in red

I created signs today for three sections ENF (Elementary Non-Fiction), JF (Junior Fiction), and E (Easy) books.  I color coded them so that we can also refer to the sections by color.  I'm even thinking of painting the shelves in the future for this purpose - to make sections even more clear and as a way to add more color to the library.  The ENF sign is done in red, JF in light blue, and E in purple.  I specifically did not choose red and green at the same time for signs because patrons who experience color-blindness often get these colors confused.  The signs are big (easier to spot) and posted on each row of shelves.  I laminated them to be more durable and to look more professional.  Under the section signs, I put Dewey Decimal numbers for the ENF books and letters to mark author names in the JF and E sections.  This way, patrons will know what books are in each aisle. 

This also makes shelving much more easy for me and my staff of course.

Junior Fiction (JF) in blue

Because we are an elementary library and some of the kids are still learning their letters or have trouble finding books, we have decided to make sure that letters are not split from row to row in the JF and E sections.  For example our rows now say in JF: A-D, E-K, L-Q, R-Z and E: A-G, H-M, N-U, and V-Z (I wouldn't want the books to end up saying A-Da and De-K).

Everybody (E) in purple

On a side note, we will not be refering to E books anymore as "Easy."  We are going to be calling them "E" for "Everybody."  This is because some kids, whether they be lower skilled readers or ESL students, might not find these books so easy.  We don't want students to feel bad if books end up being difficult when they are supposedly easy.  Books in this section tend to be more picture books, something enjoyed by a variety of ages, so that is why "Everybody" is a great word for this section and allows us to keep the letter "E." 

As we change the library around to make it as user-friendly as possible, ideas for additional sections have come.  As those sections are created, we will have additional signage and colors to make things easy to find. 

Bookshelves

Our library is every day more and more spacious! 

Just five of the shelving units we were able to free up.
We have more space now.

We have had a lot of shelves that are only 1/4-1/2 full, making some of our shelves look empty.  In fact, there were some without any books on them at all.  By carrying books from one shelf over to the next shelf in an attempt to consolidate, we've been able to make our shelves 3/4 - 4/5 full (which is a nice space for when we get new books and so that books can go on/off the shelves easily).  We have been putting lots of shelving units in storage.  In fact, over the past few days we have taken out 13 shelving units!  It looks great and staff and students have really commented how much they like the extra space! 

Each row of remaining shelves is double-sided.  All our shelving units are the same height.  In junior fiction this height is divided into 4 shelves, but in non-fiction and picture books, it is divided into 3 shelves since these books are normally bigger.  We now have three rows of non-fiction (74 shelves), two rows of junior fiction (64 shelves), and two rows of picture books (48 shelves). 

There are still other shelves in the library with some books needing to be put into new sections we will create and some needing to be shelved back into sections we already have.  Most of these are in the younger kids' reading area but there are some on the other side of the library also.  I want to do something with these, but for now, it's already a huge step forward. 

I love that all our shelving units have wheels on the bottom, so it is very easy to move shelves around.

Because of all the extra room, we have been able to pull the shelving units away from the walls and make wider aisles (115 cm of distance between each row).  This means that patrons can now walk full circle around all the book shelves, allowing them to follow number and letter sequences more naturally when trying to find call numbers.  As there are wider aisles and two entrances/exits to the rows, there is less congestion. 

In sum, the shelves look full and healthy, there is more room to walk, and less shelves that kids have to search through to find books. 

Email signature

I have changed my school email signature so that quick important links are permanently there and easy to find.  This reduces the need for staff members to hunt for links if they can’t remember them – they can go to any email I send and find the information in any one. 

In my email signature, I have my name, position, and our school website.  Below that, there are three things that people can click on.

1. Our online card catalogue

By clicking on this link, patrons will be taken straight away to our

school’s online catalogue.  This provides them another quick and easy way to find books and other resources they need quickly.

2. Our library sign-up calendar

We have regularly scheduled library classes (33 out of 35 instructional blocks in the elementary school), but teachers can also sign up to bring their classes in for projects, looking for books, etc.  This calendar allows them to do that and also make sure that there aren’t already classes who have reserved the spot. 

3. Book suggestion form

I created a short online form in Google Apps so that teachers can suggest future books and other resources for our library.  Their suggestions get sent to a spreadsheet that I can view anytime.  This  greatly facilitates the process when the time comes to make orders.  The order form is really user-friendly, with no log-in required, and even has a picture of Indian spices to make the page more appealing since my school is in India.     

I find that having these things readily available, each time someone reads one of my emails, reminds patrons about the links and encourages them to use them.

Welcome bulletin board

Outside our library we are lucky to have a very large bulletin board.  We want to use this to welcome patrons, entice them to step on in, and keep people up to date about what's going on inside.  I would love to use this board for fun author and book trivia, reading tips, new books in our library, interesting websites to check out, and more.

The first of many bulletin board displays outside our library.  This one welcomes patrons in their home languages.

Our first bulletin board display is to welcome people to our library. We are so blessed in international schools to engage with students and faculty from around the world because it enriches us as people - we get to learn about new ways of life and gain new perspectives.   We have over 25 nationalities at our school - USA, India, Korea, Japan, Mexico, France, and Italy just to name a few, so we wanted to honor the different places we all come from by putting up "Welcome" and "Library" in different languages (of course some countries speak the same/more than one language, so the number of languages is not necessarily 25).  We went on Google Translator to get many of these (usually OK for single item vocabulary, but not necessarily for phrases or sentences) and then tried to verify with staff and parents as much as possible.  Although we don't have students from Hungary, I put up the words in Hungarian too since that is where I was working last and I am bringing those experiences with me.  Of course we have Tamil (60,000,000+ speakers) up there too, which is the state language where our school is located in India.
Welcome = வரவேற்பு. (Varaveerpu)
Library = நூலகம்.  (Nuulakam) 

Putting up children's languages shows that we honor their mother tongue.  We of course are advocates for literacy in every language, not just English (one of my goals is to strengthen our mother tongue collection). Kids feel pride when they see their language on a bulletin board or on the shelves of our library, and know that they are an important contribution to our learning community.  ESL students, especially the ones who have very limited English and have just arrived, have another place they feel comfortable in school when they see their language honored.  For this reason, the bulletin board of course will need to be updated over the next couple weeks as we discover other languages that students speak which have gone undetected. 

Because I wanted to make sure the board had something ready and welcoming by the time school started, this is how we decided to do the board this time around.  However, if we do a similar bulletin board next year, I may decide to have students make the signs in their languages, with student handwriting adding an even happier and welcoming element to the board.  Their signs could then be laminated to use in another part of the library inside once we change the display. 

Professional development collection

The professional development library for school staff has been in the library office, but I decided yesterday that it is much better suited to be in with other parts of the library.  There are several reasons behind this move.  I think some staff would naturally feel intimidated to enter someone else’s office to look for books (on the phone, in a meeting...).  In addition, the professional magazines we subscribe to are in the main part of the library, so it makes most sense to have everything together.  Furthermore, if parents or other adults are interested in looking at curriculum resources or are working on their own teaching degrees, I do not want to deny them access to the collection simply because they are in my office.  Such a move also allows patrons to peruse the professional development resources anytime the library is open, even when librarians are busy helping other patrons or in case the office is locked. 

In addition to giving people more direct access to our staff development books, it gives me more room in the office for placing new acquisitions until they are catalogued.  On the same note, it also means less people coming in and out of the office during the times I do need to do extra cataloguing or concentrate on budgets and ordering.  It is a win-win move for everybody.

The big plus is I have already noticed more staff using the professional collection!  This is great news.  Having books out in the open and visible has enticed staff to come on over and “check them out.”

We have a very decent professional collection, and there are other books in the library office that I want to add to its shelves.  However, some books seem somewhat out of place based on their call number and need to be re-catalogued so they can be better grouped in terms of subject matter, institutes, and so on.  Therefore, I plan to come up with new call numbers for this section, so books of similar content are easier to find on the shelves.

I also want to go through these shelves as soon as possible to look at what we have already and to see what important professional books should be added to the collection.  With this objective in mind, I am seeking the input of our curriculum coordinator and classroom teachers on what resources they would like to see on these shelves in the future. 

Welcome!

Welcome to my library blog.  Not only do I find myself in a new school year, but this time in a new school as well.  I am honored to be the new elementary librarian at the American International School in Chennai, India.  We have 550 students in elementary, and I am excited to help each and every one develop important information literacy skills as well as a passion for reading.  I’ve inherited a great library – a wonderful space, a nice staff, and fantastic resources, but like everywhere, there are enhancements to be made of course.  Join me on this year’s library journey as I take you the exciting changes we are making and what goes on behind the scenes.