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.