On the 28th I wrote a long post about feeling like one of the rotting pumpkins in the library. You never saw it (thankfully) but it was cathartic and it made me shift my thinking.
Last Friday, our district had a 1/2 day professional development day so teachers could work on report cards. I always use that time to accomplish tasks I can only do at school. Things like cleaning my office and changing displays and bulletin boards.
On this particular day, I decided to set aside an hour to work on weeding my Everybody section. You see, with all the unDeweying that has been going on in the last year, the Everybody section has been neglected. (And again, in the interest of complete honesty, I don't know if I have ever done a conscious weeding of that section. There goes my name back up near the top of the bad librarian list!)
I had 2 goals in mind while weeding. 1) Take a look at the condition of my books. 2) Do I have diversity in my collection or is my Everybody section just a mumbo jumbo of "fun" books for little people? This was a big topic of discussion at my recent district wide professional development. I need to make sure I have books in my collection that kids can "see" themselves in.
Okay folks. Lesson learned and ready to be passed on. Ready. Get a pencil. (I'll wait!) Here it comes:
WEED YOUR EVERYBODY SECTION! DO NOT WAIT! DO IT NOW!
I am only through EG and here's what I have discovered so far:
1) My collection is a lot more diverse than I realized. There are some wonderful hidden gems on them there shelves. Note the use of the word hidden. The shelves are so crowded right now that students just keep reaching for the books on the ends of the top shelves so the same old same old books are going out the door.
2) I have a lot of yucky books that I did not even know were yucky. They look nice from the outside. They get checked out a lot. But open them up and they have scribble marks on the front pages and wrinkled pages from being shoved in bookbags/desks and ripped pages that are taped back together and broken internal spines. My students deserve better books than that. They don't have to ready yucky books when we have plenty of lovely books just awaiting someone to read them. Plus, how embarrassing to have them take that book home? YIKES.
In my defense, I do weed books as I shelve/check in. But time is tight and I don't have the opportunity to open them all up and take a peek. At least when I am finished this round, I will have a head start on making my collection stay better maintained.
Also in my defense, I have a book hospital for broken and unloved (or too greatly loved) books. So some of these titles should have definitely fallen into that basket via student input.
3) I had multiple copies of books. I don't need 3 copies of the same book. I can use that real estate for another book that a different child may love.
So now I have another item on my to-do list. The goal is to use at least one planning a week to get the Everybody section in order so my collection will be ready for uploading when district ordering time arrives.
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