We always enjoy vising our members! Sure – any library will have interesting things to see; that’s one of the cool things about touring all sorts of libraries. But it feels a little extra special when we are seeing cool things in one of our member libraries! (There may be a teeny bit of bias; but really – it’s pretty unquestionable that we have some great libraries in our CMLE community!)
I love cute library art – so seeing this as I walked into the media center was just great for me! Bringing art, colorful things, and catchy images into your library will always help to ensure your patrons will be more likely to pay attention to your materials, services, and programs.
Every library needs to think about their physical layout. (Well, the library staff do that, not the library area itself!) As you are looking around your library, it’s important to think about it from the perspective of your users – not what you are used to doing. Can small kids reach the books? Can patrons in wheelchairs maneuver down the aisles? Does it look appealing, or do your shelves scream “Don’t touch me!”
You can see an example of a nice job done here! Ahhhh…a bench! It’s nice to have someplace to sit with a stack of books a patron might want to browse before deciding which books to take home. And this is an elementary school, so you can see that the shelves are low enough to be read. Cover art sells the book! Admire how many books are faced outward, so books are going to be more likely to attract a patron who may want to them them home. It feels roomy, tidy, and like a place I’d enjoy browsing!
Sorry about the poor photo quality – I’m not showing the library as nicely as it looks in real life; but you can see how neat it is! All those covers! Cute things on the shelves to encourage people to pick them up! And look at that undersea art hanging from the ceiling!!!! I love that the library is working in three dimensions of providing interesting things to look at for kids visiting the library!
I was there right after the Newbery Medal awards were distributed, along with a host of other good awards for kid books. Check them all out here. It’s been great to see how many of our members immediately set up displays to show off award-winning books! These are not the only good books to share in a library, but they are a good place to start with developing a good collection!
For some info on award winners, check out our Reading With Library podcast episode: Minnesota Youth Reading Awards. (You can subscribe to this podcast in your favorite app, or just listen on our website.)
Sorry again about the poor photo quality! But I wanted to include this anyway because I loooove this shelving strategy!!
Hands up, everyone who understands what all the numbers/classification metadata in the Dewey Decimal system means? (Catalogers, put your hands down; we aren’t counting you here.) Yeah, I don’t either. Sure, we’ve probably all got the gist of it. But it’s our job (most of us!) to understand the basics of how to find books.
Great. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s just…complicated.
Anything that puts up a barrier between “patron eagerly looking for information” and “stuff we provide” is a problem. It’s already hard enough to talk people into coming to the library, and then to use it, and to take the further step of checking things out to enjoy at home. Whatever we can do make those steps easier is always going to be a great decision.
So, I love when I see libraries with verbal descriptions of what those numbers mean! I absolutely could NOT have told you that 910.919 means: Space travel near Earth. But look! Those books are sitting right there, on the shelf, and as I walk by – no matter what I was looking for beforehand – I might now think these are just the right books for me. And yay: we’ve moved more information into the hands of a patron!
And here I’m going to take a little bit of extra pride in the work Doug Asquith, Media and Digital Learning Specialist, and his staff are doing. Because he bought these books with a mini-grant from CMLE! I had to stop and admire them – all cataloged and ready to be loaned out to students. This is a great series for making that transition between younger kid books, and the chapter books for more advanced readers. What a great idea!!
So, have we been to YOUR library yet? You know we want to come visit! So send me an email (mary @ cmle . org) with a couple of days that are good for you. Let’s get this started!