storytime katie

This post is LONG overdue, but as soon as I had written it, we had to change everything in the catalog and start over!

There were a lot of questions about how we were going to display the call numbers in the catalog. We are very lucky that we have almost complete autonomy on what we can list in the catalog, as far as number of characters etc. And we thought that we wouldn’t have a problem including the slashes that we use on the book spines. So, that’s the direction that we first went with:

(You can see that some of our multiple copies got split up between neighborhoods!)

I loved how this looked in the catalog. I thought it was very clear that the neighborhood and street were linked. My staff members had learned how to read the calls again, and patrons were giving us positive feedback.

…

And then we ran a report.

And those sweet, beautiful looking slashes messed up how our reports were run. And we had to get rid of all the slashes. Now, our catalog looks like this:

Staff and patrons have adjusted from this change (we made it about a month ago now), and everyone is still able to navigate without the slashes. I will likely always miss the look of them, but understand and support letting them go for functionality.

Next up, signs in Picture Book City!

Besides the obvious re-cataloging going on, I’m still purchasing new books. As they arrive in the library, I now have the task of reading each book and deciding where it will go in our neighborhoods.

When new books arrive, I take them back to my desk and read the, to figure out where they will go. It’s a bit of a messy process as you can see from the picture!

If I have trouble deciding where the book will go, I do look in our catalog and see what subject headings have been assigned. (Since we’re a part of a large consortium, it is rare that we are the first library to receive any title.) Sometimes that helps and sometimes it confuses me even more!

The biggest problem that I’ve come across is when I want to be a book into two different neighborhoods. Larger libraries would have the option of buying a second copy, but with $1000 for picture books for the year, I don’t always have the option. So I’ve been keeping a wishlist of titles that I would like doubles of if I can get them/afford them.

After I decide where the books are going, I make the labels and take them back to Tech Services where they then get barcoded and added to the catalog.

Next week, come back for a look at how the books appear in our catalog and a status update on how complete the project is after a full month of working on it!

Our biggest section in Picture Book City is and will likely continue to be the Favorites section. It’s where we are putting all those popular characters like Dora the Explorer and Disney.

So far it’s been the easiest section to determine and doesn’t require a ton of input from me since we already shelved our character books under “J-E FIC DOR” or “J-E FIC DIS.” My staff has been able to work on this without my direct input, which has been super helpful.

I did decide to continue using the character’s name in place of the author last name on the spine label. That way whoever writes a Dora media tie-in will be shelved with all the other Dora tie-ins.

But this section is also for authors that I don’t want to split up. I’ve already designated Kevin Henkes, Lauren Thompson, Mo Willems, and countless other authors to this section. This is what my staff worked on while I was at Midwinter and I came back to eight full shelves completed!

The last part of Favorites is our only “street” in the section — Favorites / Awards. I have all the Caldecott winners. I didn’t put honor books, simply because we already have 75 winners and that’s a shelf and a half. (We do have all the winners though. I went through the list recently and double-checked since the schools assign the kids to read Caldecott winners and we have a local library school close by.)

I also pulled our state awards, the Monarchs, for Favorites / Awards as well. I struggled here since we only have seven winners so far. I wondered if I should include the second and third place winners to beef up this area. Ultimately, it made more sense to think towards the future when we’ll have 75 winners there too!

One of the most important things that I kept in mind while working on this section was whether it was a favorite of the kids/patrons or if it was a favorite of mine. So, even though I love Antoinette Portis, I separated out her books since the kids/patrons would benefit more from seeing “Kindergarten Diary” in Growing Up / School.

I’m still finding a few more books to add as I go through the rest of the books, but I think that overall, we are mostly done with Favorites.

Coming up on Picture Book City — what happens when a new box of books comes in? How do they get processed? Tune it next week!