Nonfiction Redo

As a manager, circulation is a big number that I have to take into account.  We use it when purchasing, weeding, and making major decisions.  Every year I was running our juvenile nonfiction circulation stats and they kept dropping (anywhere from 8-20% per year).  Our overall circulation during the same time was not having the same drastic decreases.  One year was a 3% drop, while another was a 19% increase.  Things were good overall, but this section needed some attention.  The hard part was that I couldn't weed it down too much as many of the books are used for school and reports.  After a year of watching data, we knew that we needed to change.

Research
No big project should ever be started without some research.  We looked at other big nonfiction changes around the country and talked to libraries.  They were getting amazing results-some circulation was even up 20-30%!

Some links that may help you in your research include:

• Reshelving Project: Almost There and Already Awesome
• Are Dewey's Days Numbered?
• The Dewey Dilemma
• Notes from the Field: Going "Dewey Free" at Kent District Library

Decisions, Decisions
After your research, you have to decide what you are going to do and how to do it.  Our challenge was that we have 3 locations-a Main Library and 2 branches.  Both branches interfiled their adult and juvenile nonfiction.  Whatever we chose to test out had to work for both children and adults.

We decided that a modified version of BISAC was our best bet.  We went mostly with the adult subject headings, but there were a couple of children's ones that we needed to add in (ex. Fairy Tales and Folklore).  There were a couple of places where we combined subjects or made up headings to suit our needs (ex. Literature).  We also wanted to pare down our list to just the headings that we needed.  My boss originally wanted 15, but we negotiated up to 35.  If we were just reclassifying children's, we could have gone with a smaller number.  

The Work
Once the decisions are all made, you are set to get to work.  My boss let us hire a college student who was home for the summer to do all of our relabeling.  Our ILS allows us to make bulk changes so we were able to change whatever was relabeled on a given day.  This took 2 months of 1 person working 10 hours a week to change a 20,000 item collection.

Once the entire section was relabeled, it was time to move the books.  If I were doing it again, I would pull a bunch of people to move them over a couple of days.  It took 2 of us 3 weeks to move them all.  This was also the beginning of our heavy outreach season so it wasn't the best time for a shifting project.

The Final Result 
Want to see what this looks like?  Each section has a sign at the beginning that identifies the section.  All spine labels in this section (Science) would start with SCIENCE to help with shelving.  Once in a section, the call numbers are filed by Dewey number.

We always start new sections at the top of a bay of shelves to make it easier on the customers.  We also added a lot of face-outs-all of the top shelves in the nonfiction section are now face-outs.

Instead of Dewey numbers on our endcaps, we now list sections.

What Do Our Customers Think?
We've now had this new organization system in place for 4 months.  We are pulling our circulation stats every 3 months to monitor how it is doing over this year.  After our first quarter, juvenile nonfiction is up 18% in circulation!  

It is not uncommon for us to now see kids sitting in the middle of aisles with a stack of books that they are perusing.  We are seeing less nonfiction location questions from kids because they are better able to find their materials between the signage and the face-outs.  I will admit that the parents are less than thrilled their first time that they have to find a juvenile nonfiction book.  I get a lot of "What have you done?"  After I explain that we are a trial for 1 year because the kids just were not finding the materials and that now they are, they come around.  It does take some librarian time showing people how to find their items in the OPAC and what they should write down to find their items on the shelf.

The above is part of a letter from one of our local teachers telling us how much she loved the new organization.  It made my day!

What's Next?
We are going to keep collecting circulation statistics through mid-September before any future decisions are made.  We were a test site for this project so other departments/locations are watching to see what happens.
 

Revamping Our Parent-Teacher Collection

My new location has a parent-teacher collection, which is an important component of a children's room.  After all, parents and teachers are using your collection already.  Why not add some of their stuff in too?  Unfortunately, there were a number of problems that I came into with this collection.  Here are some of the ways that I solved them.

Problem #1-The collection itself
There were very few books added (under 10/year) and much of the collection was our weeded professional reference books.  I started with pulling the stats by Dewey number (we use Relative Use and circulation stats) and doing a massive weeding project.  Honestly, very few people want to check out our old books about planning a summer reading program. 

Then came the purchasing of new books.  Our children's budget at the moment is one large pot so there is no money specified for specific collections and nobody is in charge of making sure stuff is bought.  This makes it easy to forget when ordering.  Next fiscal year, we will be dividing up our budget based on what's being used and members of the department will be in charge of the entire collection development cycle for that collection.

To get us started for this year, I did purchase new items.  This is one of those collections where you have to look outside the normal journals to find quality items.  Here are some of my sources.

• Lakeshore Learning-books are split by subject area in the store so it is easy to look for books for a specific Dewey range or subject area.
• Barnes and Noble-I went through both the parenting and education sections and looked for multiple copies, glossy covers, and subjects where our stats showed more books were needed.
• Other libraries with similar collections-We have a local library who has an awesome parent-teacher collection and used to put all of their new books up on their web site.  It was easy for me to go through their list and see what would fit our collection.  It also showed me different publishers to check.
• Publisher's web sites-I am a big fan of Mailbox Books because their selections have ready-to-go projects and lesson plans that can be adapted for both teachers and parents.

Problem #2-Location & Signage
The collection was in the far back corner of the department and the signage was to the left of the shelves.  When standing in front of the books, it was difficult to tell what they were. When standing in front of the books, it was difficult to tell what they were.

Since there was empty space after the weeding project, I shifted the books to free up the top shelf.  I created a sign that highlighted new books and displayed them on this shelf.  Plus, the sign has "Parent-Teacher" right at the top so it makes it a bit more obvious what is in the collection.  The sign has both cover art and Dewey numbers so staff can pull more items to add to the display as items are checked out.

Based on observation and stats, the changes seem to be working.  Have you had to revamp a collection?  How did you do it?

Early Literacy Kits

One of the cool things about working for a newer library system is that there is always something to do.  Everything here has been built from the ground up.  Late last summer I went through a job change.  One of the questions that were a part of the application process was "What new collection would you bring to the library?"  My answer was early literacy kits.  They support our collection goals and our current programming (we have a big early literacy program here called Play to Learn).  My idea was that these kits would take what we do in our early literacy programming and send it home in bags for parents and children to do at home.

I know that this never happens, but as we were turning in last year's final grant report to a local organization, they asked if we were reapplying as they really wanted to fund us again.  Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, me and the person I was replacing spent the next 48 hours putting together a grant proposal for early literacy kits.  Two months later we were funded.  Whoo hoo!

I started putting together notes as to what to include and where to buy it.  Of course, very few of our items are sold through the same vendors.  Pinterest became a great place to bookmark ideas.  Our branches wanted some kits too, just not the 15 that we were planning on for our Main Library (space issues). 

Items started coming in and made a huge mess on my office floor-there were piles everywhere.  Things got put together in groups, were processed, and started filling our bags.  I worked with our Community Relations Specialist to create booklets for each bag (I came up with the content and she made them pretty.)

Today I finished our first two kits!  They are out on display and I created a binder so customers can see what is in each backpack.

Display

Binder

Kit 1-Brown Bear, Brown Bear

This kit contains:

• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr.
• My Big Animal Book
• Brown Bear and Friends CD
• Flannelboard set made in-house
• Storytelling lapboard
• Brown bear puppet
• Brown Bear puzzle
• Booklet

Kit 2-Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
This kit contains:

• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault
• ABC
• Wee Sing & Learn ABC book and CD
• Coconut tree puppet made in-house
• 26 coconut letters (A-Z) made in-house
• Alphabet Match Me cards
• Uppercase Tactile Letters
• Booklet

The rest of the early literacy kits should be appearing in my library (and here) over the next month.  13 more to go!

Shelf Challenge 2014

It's back!  To celebrate School Library Media Month, The Busy Librarian is hosting another Shelf Challenge.  The goal is to read through one manageable section during the month of April and report back on the good, the bad, and the ugly.  This is a great way to familiarize yourself with your collection, check out your collection development, and find new gems for programming.  Last year I concentrated on the picture book "F" section.  This year I will work on the picture book "B" section.

The "B" section starts off with one of my favorite authors for two year old programming-Byron Barton.  The text is simple and large, there are few words on the page, and all of the illustrations are brightly colored.

I will be back again soon to show off more B titles.  Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter with the hashtag #shelfchallenge or on Pinterest.

Going to PLA

I will be heading to Indianapolis this week for the PLA Conference.  If you see me, stop by and say hello.  Otherwise, I will be blogging live from PLA over on the ALSC blog.

Best Books of 2013

It's that time of year again!  Best book lists are being released across the literary spectrum.  I will admit that I am a big fan of best book lists.  I think of them like a collection development report card.  Did I get my ordering right this year?  They also give me a second chance to pick up a title that I may have missed.  

As I go through the titles on the "best" lists, I put them into a spreadsheet.  I like to do this because it shows me which titles are getting the most press.  There is a big difference between the Amazon list and the School Library Journal list, as they speak to different audiences (sales vs. school libraries).  Neither is wrong.  A good collection needs popular books, such as those that will appear on the Amazon or Publisher's Weekly lists.  On the other hand, you need ones that are thought-provoking and cover nonfiction topics, such as those from School Library Journal.  My favorite lists include:

• Amazon
• Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards (note-these will include some 2012 titles)
• National Book Awards-Young People's Literature
• Publisher's Weekly
• School Library Journal

Other than collection development, what can you do with these lists?  Here are some of the things that I do:

• hoard titles that are on multiple lists the week before ALA's Youth Media Awards.  I like to add shiny labels to them right away and create a special display.
• create a "Best of 2013" display.  Customers love anything that says "best of".  Plus, if they are good titles, we want them to circ so they don't end up weeded.
• have your tech person run the top 10 titles that your library has circulated over the past year.  This type of list is fun to put out on social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).  Then, you can compare your list to the experts.  It is never a surprise for me when Diary of a Wimpy Kid ends up in our top 10.

These are just a few of my ideas.  What do you do?

 

Weeding 101

It's the part of our job most of us dread-weeding time!  If you are one of those people who doesn't have much experience with weeding or cringes every time you have to start, here are some helpful hints to get you started (or keep you going).

First of all, weeding is not personal.  The world is not going to end because you had to withdraw a Judy Blume book from your collection.

Weeding is a necessity if you want to purchase new items.  Eventually you will run out of shelf space.

For us, shelves that aren't totally full tend to circulate better than shelves that are packed full of books.  Personally, I think this has to due with the laws of supply and demand-if it looks like somebody is using a section, others will want to also.

There are always some items you will not weed, even if they don't get the stats you want.  At our branch we don't weed award winners (Newbery, Caldecott, etc.), because even if they aren't checked out, they are frequently used in the building by teachers and college students.

Decide on your parameters before you look at the section.  Otherwise, once you get there it is very easy to want to keep everything and it becomes really easy to rationalize. 

You can use different parameters for different sections.  After all, every section circulates differently.  For example, in our jfic area, a book needs to go out five times in one year.  So if it has been on the shelf for five years, it needs to circulate 25 times.  In our juvenile book on cd section, it just needs to circ one time.  These are numbers that we came up with for our collection through years of trial and error.  They may not work for everyone.

Condition of the items is important.  If a book is falling apart, if the spine is broken, or if the cover is torn, your customers will not want to take the item home.  If it isn't something that you can easily fix through mending, that item should be pulled and either weeded or replaced.  A good example of this section is our board book collection.  We rarely have to weed due to low circ.  It is frequently weeded because of the condition of the books.

You may notice weird things while weeding that you will want to change.  For example, we used to have really high numbers of jfic books that needed to be weeded, even though we had space on the shelves for them.  We switched the length of time that we keep our new books labeled as such from 6 months to 9 months and this has made a big difference in circulation for both collections.

As a side note, many people suggest displays to keep low circulating titles from being weeded.  If this is something that you want to try, you need to be very proactive with it.  After all, one circulation of an item will not help most of us.  It needs to be more of an ongoing thing.  Two ways to make this work are to highlight an entire collection for a length of time, such as poetry in April.  Otherwise make your display and keep a list of what you want on that display (we can do this right through our ILS).  Then, as the items are returned, put them back on the display.  Since most items go out for a couple of weeks, you will want this to be a long-term display of at least a month or two.

For a more comprehensive list, you may want to check out the Sunlink Weed of the Month Archives.  They used to highlight nonfiction collections monthly, but now have one big list.  A good overview, especially of nonfiction, can be found on the Arizona State Library site.  For an interesting take on how much to weed, you may want to check out a presentation from PLA 2010 on relative use statistics.

Favorite Authors

As I have been going through the ALA 2013 Notables list, I noticed that there are authors that I always order.  Their books are always good or fit our collection exactly right, that when I see their name, I am searching in our ordering system to find their next books.  I know that I could place them on standing order like I do our series books, but then I miss the fun of seeing what's coming out (honestly, it is like Christmas morning!).


Picture Books

• Eric Carle
• Lois Ehlert
• Candace Fleming
• Kevin Henkes
• Eric Rohmann
• Laura Vaccaro Seeger
• The Steads (both Philip and Erin)
• Melanie Watt (I am a gigantic Scaredy Squirrel fan.  Almost as big as Pete the Cat)
• David Wiesner
• Mo Willems
• Paul Zelinsky

Chapter Books

• Christopher Paul Curtis (Quality stuff & Michigan author)
• Lois Lowry
• Sarah Pennypacker
• Laura Amy Schlitz (She has been really hitting the Newberys recently.)
• Gary Schmidt (Quality stuff & Michigan author)
• Raina Telgemeier

Nonfiction

• Nic Bishop (Animal books and Michigan photographer.  Really, how can you beat that?!?)
• Karen Blumenthal
• Russell Freedman
• Steve Jenkins (I can't have enough animal books.)
• Phillip Hoose (Check out his recent record.  Really, they are all award winners.)
• Deborah Hopkinson
• Sy Montgomery
• Jim Murphy
• Kadir Nelson
• Jack Prelutsky
• Doreen Rappaport

The one important note about this list is that it is constantly evolving.  There are always new authors & illustrators appearing on the scene and new awards being presented.