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In my librarianship, I work to keep student and community needs at the center of all I do.
In my librarianship, I work to keep student and community needs at the center of all I do.
Centering student and community needs can be as simple as paying attention in interactions with patrons and working to remove physical and technical barriers to information access, wherever they may be.
For example, after observing how our middle school students relied on us to pull nonfiction resources for them instead of seeking it out for themselves, my Teacher Librarian and I decided to make the nonfiction section easier for students to use independently.
After working with the Teacher Librarian to weed the nonfiction collection, I asked students to browse the weeded collection and identify books and topics of interest to them. I then worked over the summer to:
break up the long rows of spine out books in our previous arrangement
create space on every shelf to showcase at least two representative and inviting books face out for students to read or use as landmarks
replace the old Dewey-centric signs with new topic-oriented signs, that catered to the students' expressed interests
When school resumed in the fall, my Teacher Librarian and I worked together to drum up interest in our renovated nonfiction collection by:
teaching classes and individual students how to navigate the nonfiction collection
incorporating nonfiction books into every display
hosting a winter Book Cafe to highlight the various types of nonfiction books in our collection
A sample of the revised nonfiction signs. (Credit: Shala Howell)
A representative bookcase from our rearranged nonfiction section. (Photo: Shala Howell)
The students responded so well to the revamped nonfiction section that my Teacher Librarian and I decided to use some of the same student-centered principles to increase the physical accessibility of our fiction, audiobook, short story, and graphic novel collections as well.
The middle school library as it appeared in August 2022, after its fiction, nonfiction, short story, graphic novel, and audiobook collections had been completely rearranged to increase their physical accessibility. Before rearranging our library, we had roughly 300 books face out on our bookshelves to entice our readers. After rearranging the library, we were routinely able to have more than 1500 books (10% of our collection) on display at any given time -- just in our regular stacks. Having so many books face out made the library feel more welcoming and inviting to patrons. As one student put it, "this place makes me want to read." The ends of the bookcases have labels for students to use as signposts, and are decorated with images of a diverse set of popular middle grade writers and their books, an idea that came from a librarian I follow on social media. (Photo: Shala Howell)
Of course, breaking down barriers doesn't only mean removing physical barriers to information access. It also means using technology to boost education and learning, as I describe in Technology that Boosts Teaching and Learning. This philosophy informs my information literacy instruction work as well, as you can see in the collaborative lessons described on my Unit Plans page.
Want to learn more about my nonfiction project?
You read more on this nonfiction project and how I implemented it over time with the help of my Teacher Librarian, students, and other teachers at my school on my personal blog, Caterpickles:
The initial post describing how students inspired the project is here: Making our nonfiction section more browse-able.
A post describing how I evolved the signs from an old librarian-centric Dewey Decimal based set to a more student-friendly topic-oriented set is here: Making our nonfiction section more browse-able, Part IV
A post describing how teachers at my school collaborated to help us promote our nonfiction collection is here: Mid-year update: Making our nonfiction more accessible
And finally, a post describing the results of all of these efforts: Year-end nonfiction project update
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