Looking Back and Looking Ahead

January 1st - Happy New Year!  It's a day for traditionally looking back to see the (many)accomplishments and (hopefully) few regrets of the previous year and looking forward and making plans for the new year. 

So, in that vein, let's start by looking backwards.

1)  I ran circulation reports for the fiction and nonfiction sections for the same time periods.  Here are the results:

	11/18/2013-1/1/2014	11/18/2014-1/1/15	+/-  change
Fiction	764	1149	+385
NonFiction	176	695	+519
Total Checkouts (minus Everybody)	940	1844	+904

 So if the goal of this project was to increase the number of circulations, mission accomplished!  And that is the goal, isn't it?  All the hard work and hours have a clear payoff at the end. 

2) I submitted my first ever proposal to present at a conference (AASL).

3) I got to know my collection - intimately!

4) I weeded.  In January 2014, there were 8856 items in my collection and by the end of the Un-Deweying process, there were 7,812 items.  That is a difference of 1,044 items.  Some of these (let's say 10% or so) were normal weeding due to wear and tear but the rest were a direct result of the genrefication process.

5) I became an accidental blogger.  It's intriguing when I look at the blog stats and see that it has been viewed by someone in France, Germany or Russia.  I wonder what they must think and how they ended up here.  What possible search engine term did they use?

Regrets?  The first, and really only, one that comes to mind would be doing this mid-year.  I am a planner.  I am a thinker.  I like lists I can check off.  And yet, I plunged headfirst into this.  I may have been a bit less stressed and, honestly, done a bit less stress eating if I had made this a summer project.

Now to look forward.

1) Kelly and I completed the application to present at Common Ground. According to the website, we should hear by January 10th if our proposal was accepted or not.

2) I'll continue to monitor the circulation statistics to see if the upward trend continues.

3) I'll continue blogging.  I need to take the good camera in and take some clear shots.  We have a professional day coming up and I see that on my to-do list.

4) ??  Who knows what opportunities will present themselves!  I am going to be receptive and say "yes" more than "no" or at least try to do that.

 

Nonfiction Feedback

This was the first week for the new and improved nonfiction section of the library.  Students were super excited to explore the new categories.  If I had a nickel, for each time a student asked if this was a "new" book, I could retire!  They, and I, discovered so many neat books that had been languishing on the shelves. 

I put out the Flipcam again and here is a snapshot of the videos that were recorded:

 

 

I did have a few kiddos who seemed lost and not sure where to go.  It is much like going to Nordstrom's for the first time.  So many floors.  So much to see.  Where to start?  It can be intimidating.  I'm anxious to see how things go over the next few weeks. 

 

And the unexpected AHA that happened today?  A third grader asked, "So when we return our books, we don't use the numbers anymore, right?  So, how do we put them on the cart?"  Ummm...hadn't thought about that!  Here's the cart he was talking about:

 



 I love this cart.  It was one of the first things I bought for my library and I worked really hard teaching the students to look at the spine of the book and put it in the correct spot.  We have almost 500 kids checking out multiple books.  That is ALOT of books to shelve by myself.

 

Thank goodness for 1/2 days for students, and a delayed meeting with Kelly, because I was able to make some very quick changes. I removed the numbers and added the stickers from each category.  I tried to anticipate the most highly visited categories and combine those with lesser visited ones.

 

 

We are going to live with this for a week or so and then I plan on making 2x2 copies of the icons and finalizing the placement of them on the cart.

 

Shortly afterward, Kelly arrived and we spent a couple of hours working on the submission for Common Ground 2015.  It is hard to believe only a month has gone by since all of this started.  We had so much to reflect upon and even more "next steps" to complete.

 

Check back later this weekend as I am going to crunch some numbers and see how circulation fared in the new nonfiction section.