Portable Flannelboard Recommendation

I want to share a recommendation for this portable flannel board that I just purchased for my library, made by Educational Insights. It's lightweight and awesome! It's a flannel board, magnet board, and whiteboard all in one, and can stand on it's own or be held in the lap. It's going to be awesome when my library is closed this summer and I'm doing storytime on the go. I bought it through Amazon

Facelift

I noticed that kids at the circ desk were often bored bored bored and literally trying to climb the wall while their parents registered for cards, paid fines, or took care of other adult business. At self-checkout, kids are involved in the process, but here at the desk there was nothing for them to do. So I bought some acrylic mirrors through Amazon, and gave the desk a facelift (...see what I did there? FACElift? I'm hilarious).

I wish I could post pictures of all the kids interacting with the display. They are adorable! I notice pre-readers "reading" the emotions portrayed, and naturally mimicking the expressions--often in every mirror, big and small. And most importantly, it serves as a great distraction for while the adults are busy at the desk. Success!

Edit: I'd be happy to share the files with the faces I created. Email me at gmail: opinionsbyanna

Charlotte's Web Display

Some days you need to forget about the to-do list and make yourself happy. I lost a lot of sources/starred items with the demise of Google Reader, but I am fairly certain the inspiration for this web came from the blog of the Carle Museum, Making Art with Children.

My original idea only went as far as, "Make a web with the word "READ," in the vein of Charlotte's Web." Because I was crabby and wanted to do something creative.

But it just looked...not quite done yet. I thought a display of animal books would be a good fit, but behind the window seat is a large gap--I needed to find something to put behind the cushion if I wanted to display any books. I went library scavenging, and it was my lucky day--I found an old shelf that I could jam in there.

Then I did a quick scan through my J fiction shelves, whipped up a quick sign, and voila!

Now (hopefully) people won't see the web as a Halloween thing, since I plan to leave it up all through November.

Teen Room Display

Though I don't directly work with teens, I am still the on-site advocate for teens at my branch. Due to the demise of Google Reader, I don't know where this fab idea first came from--but it wasn't mine. Sad face.

Just Give Me a Reason...What books do YOU recommend?

Post-its, a writing prompt pulled from the title of a Top 40 song, markers, and a poster frame lined with colorful paper.

It took a while to get started...

But it began to catch on...

Yep, the teens are my branch are excited about books and reading--no doubt about it! I am thinking I'll change it to ask for favorite quotes next.

What else could I do?

 

Show Me the Awesome--Diversity in Collection Development

Artwork by John LeMasney, lemasney.com.

As part of the fantastic "30 Days of Self Promotion" blog tour going on this month (full archive), I'm going to write about something very near and dear to my heart: Diversity in Collection Development.

Why Does it Matter?

I don't care how homogeneous, remote, or just plain 'white' your community is--you should be thinking about diversity in your collections, AND in the books you present during storytime. One of the biggest parts of our mission as librarians is to provide access. Access to technology, to ideas, to education and, more broadly, access to the amazing world we live in. We provide windows into other lives, other ways of living. And we also have a responsibility to show kids how much the same life is--how much we all have in common. It's our responsibility to reflect the diverse world back to our library users.

Diversity in collection development is so much more than just books about Civil Rights, or "What it's like to live in X country." Those books are very very important. But if the only picture books we have that feature people of color are history books, historical fiction, or books about other countries we are doing a huge disservice to the people we serve. We're also contributing to the concept of 'otherness' that so many people of color live with every day. I want everyone to feel that they belong in my library. If we are building diverse collections, we need to seek out fantastic books that feature people of color and that aren't about race We need bedtime books, first day of school books, friendship books, loose tooth books and scared of the dark books that feature people of color. Those are the books that I work very hard to find and feature at my library.

It's not for me to speak about discrimination or prejudice, or to try and tell stories that don't belong to me. But what I can do is listen to those in the know, and support and promote authors of color,  and use my purchasing power to encourage publishers to embrace diversity as well. I want to be a diversity ally, and I am challenging you to be the same.

What do I actually do?

• Read blogs that focus on diversity. A lot. Challenge my viewpoints as much as possible. Learn. Grow. This is the main thing. I do everything I can to make sure that I'm aware of what's out there, and then make a point to seek out those books.
• When I'm looking through book catalogs and review publications I am always looking for books that can add diversity through my collection. I challenge myself to stop thinking, "That won't circulate here" or making assumptions about my users. I have an eagle eye watching for books about universal themes that feature people of color.
• One easy way I keep tabs on my collections is to watch my 'new books' displays--are they reflective of a diverse world? How many of the total number on display are diverse? Who would feel welcome looking at this display? (Example below)
• Watch my orders, and pay attention to book covers. I try to click through my book orders before I finish them and look at covers to get an overview of the overall diversity of each order.

Some things I read to learn:

theMicroAggressionProject 
American Indians in Children's Literature
CBC Diversity 
I'm Here, I'm Queer, Now What the Hell do I Read?
De Colores: La Raza Experience in Books for Children
Es Divertido Hablar Dos Idiomas!
Reading in Color
PaperTigers Blog
Diversity in YA

Awards and Lists:

Stonewall Award
Pura Belpre Award
Schneider FamilyAward
Coretta Scott King Award
South Asia Book Award
Rainbow Book List 

 What am I missing? I'm always looking for more!

On a random morning I took stock of my picture book display and found 8/14 titles on display were either 1. A true story about a person of color 2. Featured a person of color on the cover regardless of the story or 3. portrayed a folk or fairy tale from a non-European culture. Most of the time I don't take a photo, just count how many books on the display are diverse, then count how many books are on display total. I aim for about 50% and am pleased to report that that is an easy benchmark to hit when you pay attention to diversity!

Learning to Let Go

Book Bin from The Library Store, Inc.

I'm not out to convert anybody, but to share the story of my conversion.

Let's talk about bins. Specifically bins for picture books. The kind where the books are all standing forward with the covers facing out.

I hated them.

When I started my new job I was really annoyed to find that all the libraries in the system used them. "How do you find things for the pull list?" "They aren't in order! How do you keep them in order?!" I thought it was such a disservice to users; not having things in order or easy to find. I was seriously disgruntled that I would have to deal with picture book bins. It went against every fiber of my organized librarian being.

At my old job I supervised both the library clerks and library pages. They all hated the picture books. They hated shelving them, and they REALLY hated shelf-reading them. But they needed to be shelf-read all.the.time so I was constantly dealing with push-back on picture book maintenance.  If only those darn kids would just keep their little hands off the books so they'd stay in order.

Here's what I've learned/seen with bins:

• With bins, every single bin is a display. And the best part? They are self-filling displays! If the front book gets chosen the next book proudly stands forth. No glaring empty spot in sight. There are also bins with cool little display platforms.

• Not every collection benefits from strict alphabetical order. The majority of use picture books receive is from browsers. Making the collection easier to browse is better service. Yes, it might be slightly more inconvenient to a student or someone looking for specific books...but I spent a lot of time helping people find specific books that were supposedly in order with traditional shelving too. Managed chaos is the nature of the kids area. I'm embracing it.

• Apparently (before my time) every single library in my system increased circ on picture books after bins were installed. Kids and families love them, and increased circ is something I can definitely get behind.

• Not only are they perfect kid height, and high in kid appeal, I can find things faster too. It's much quicker and more accurate for me personally to flip through covers (while standing) than to read call numbers (while kneeling on the floor). I rarely miss the book I'm looking for this way, which I would often do when scanning call numbers. The covers and art are generally much more recognizable to me. With bins, I give faster, better, more accurate service to patrons when helping them find books.

• The department stays much tidier with bins. No more facing shelves and making sure all the spines line up. No more tipped bookends. 

• I seriously wish I could go back in time and change my old library over to bins; it would have been a great fit at that little library.  Page and clerk staff at my new library also prefer the bins, so they're happier too.

Here are some other libraries using bins:

Brown Public Library, Northfield, VT
Arlington Heights Memorial Library, IL
North Community Library, LaCrosse, WI

All that being said? The DVDs are only in order as far as the first letter, and then it's a free-for-all. Drives.me.CRAZY.

Cabin Fever Display

This would have been ever so much more timely a month ago, but it was very successful so I'll still share it.
I planned a party for the release of Cabin Fever, book six in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.


As a lead up, I put together a display of 40+ read alikes with an ad for the party.




It was a pretty nice display, and since it is right in front of the main doors to the library it got a lot of attention. It was really nice for staff too, since they could direct patrons to the display if (IF! HA!) all of our copies of Cabin Fever were checked out.

posted from Bloggeroid

On Display--Dr. Seuss and Seussical the Musical

Our local community theater is staging a production of Seussical the Muscial opening the first week of November, so I put together a display using all the books that are part of the musical. 



Since there aren't a ton of books, I made liberal use of the color copier. I photocopied the cover of each title(after cleaning and fixing them all up--eesh) and mounted them on blue construction paper. That way if the books get checked out the display will still look full and attractive.




I use Microsoft Publisher to make my signs. The font is Grinched, a free font that I downloaded--I LOVE it. I spent some time on the Dr. Seuss website Seussville, and printed some characters from the different activity sheets available there.



And, in a last minute bright idea, I whipped up a little game! We have a mural that includes the cat in the hat, and a spooky Halloween cat up right now, so kids may or may not include those in their 'ten' that they find. I actually put out nine paper cats around the library so it won't be too hard of a challenge.




Took me ten minutes tops to print, cut-out, and tape these up around the library!

posted from Bloggeroid