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.