Library Organization

[Carla]

Hello Everyone,
I am starting off my teaching career in the library & am extremely nervous. Our school library is very small. There are only about 130 students in attendance grades Pre-K to 6th. The previous librarian left a big mess and the only book inventory has been logged in a spiral notebook. I also have about 6-10 boxes of new inventory that needs to be categorized and shelved.

I kind of want to start from scratch that way I know what books we do and do not have. Do you think it would be appropriate to categorize our library similar to that of a bookstore (ie: Barnes & Noble)? For example, mystery, fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, biography, etc.

The only concern I have is that I want the students to be able to navigate their way through a "real" library and I'm not sure if this set up would help them. Any of your thoughts would be extremely helpful :)

[Carla]

Nancy,

Thank you so much for your response. You have provided me with several great ideas for organizing my chaotic library. Thanks again, have a wonderful school year!

~Carla!

[Emily Auerswald]

Carla,

How has the year been going for you? I am in a new US library (well, it was brand new when I started a couple of years ago) - not a thing was cataloged, all of the books were donations, and they were all in piles on the floor.

I started by grouping them by topic, and then refined things as I cataloged. I agree with the other poster's idea of getting the genre stickers - very helpful - makes your reshelving easier, too!

[Amy]

Hi Carla,
I started off my career in the library too where the previous librarian had also left a huge mess. So I feel your pain. Here's what I did... Our school is PreK-8. So I started by dividing the library into two areas. One area is called "The Everybody Section". This is where I have the story corner where the PreK-1st grades come for library class/storytime. In the Everybody Section, I have the following sections: Everybody Fiction (picture books), Everybody Nonfiction (nonfiction books for approximately PreK-2nd grades; organized by Dewey), Everybody Biography (for PreK-2nd), Beginning Readers (Leveled Readers like Step Into Reading), and Folktales (just the folktale picture books). So that's the area for the younger kids. The rest of the library is more for approximately 2nd-8th grade. This part includes Regular Fiction (chapter books for 2nd grade and up), Series Fiction (alphabetical by series), Regular Nonfiction (organized by Dewey; includes the folktale chapter books that were for older readers and didn't belong in the Everybody area), Reference, and Biography. I have a separate area for Middle School Fiction books too.
I know you said your library is small, but I'm not sure how small. I have approximately 500 students from PreK-8th grade and our library is approximately 14,000-15,000 books. So if your library is really, really small, you may not need so many sections. Also, I think as far as organizing the fiction, you're probably better off shelving it all together and just using genre spine stickers. Hope things work out for you... :)
Amy C

[Nancy Buchholz]

Hi Carla,

Thanks for that response. I'm new this year at a PreK- 8 school too although I have two libraries one in early
childhood and one in the lower and middle school. When I started there this past summer I tackled the lower/middle school library first. While the library was not a huge mess I still had and have a lot of work to do...tons of weeding and reorganizing. I like the way you organized your collection. I have done pretty much what you did so I feel validated. I agree with you on the genre spine stickers too.

Nancy B.