Proper signage is one of a library’s greatest assets. Not only is it critical for directing patrons towards the resources they seek, but good signage can also act as fun, colorful decorations. With the viral-ability of memes and graphics online, we all know how powerful graphics can be!

Unfortunately, purchasing awesome or personalized signage can become pricey. Which poses a problem, as many libraries face increasingly limited funds. Luckily there are tons of free resources that make it possible to easily design free signage! And I LOOOOVVVEEE designing signage. Since I have all this signage just laying around, I figured I’d share it with you all! Feel free to reuse any of my genre signs. All of them can be found at the bottom of this post. Just right-click and “save as.”

Which Free Resources?

Canva.com and Postermywall.com are two of my favorite places to design signage.

Rasterbator.net is my favorite free tool for blowing up my designs into posters. Its great because you can create large free posters (as large as you want) without needing a poster printer! You upload your picture (as high resolution as possible) into rasterbator.net. Then it lets you choose how large you want to blow it up. It then generates a printable pdf bundle where your image is blown up across multiple standard pages. You print it and then tape or glue them together, and voila, you’ve got a free poster in any size you want!

As you can see, you can’t even tell where the seams are taped together on my posters. Rasterbator.net is. just. that. good.

So I’ve created a ton of signage for my library. Here are some of the ways I use different signs in our library.

Some of the signs are used to indicate the permanent genre sections (as seen in first two pics of post).

When we genre-fied, I left a bookcase empty in between each of our permanent genre sections for use to display nonfiction books that pair well with the nearby genres. That’s what the brown signs are used for. You can see some of these nonfiction pairing displays below.

Some of the signs were created for semi-permanent displays that I do (in addition to our normal permanent genres) such as Quick Picks and Love & Romance. They’re not official genres, but I keep the displays up most of the year anyway.

And some of them are mini-signs that I created for the times when I pull just a few books for mini displays/highlights. As seen here:

Below you will find all of the genre-type signage I’ve created thus far. All are free for you to use. Please do not resell them or anything like that. You can save them by right-clicking and choosing “save as.”

Here are my large sized fiction genre posters. I made them 24inx8in which allowed me to have rasterbator.net create them across three pages.

Here are some of the 6inx4in mini-signs I use for mini-displays.

Here are various 8.5×11 sized signs I’ve created for various displays/uses over the years.

Enjoy!

 

What to read next?

This question, from students, used to really stress me out when I started at my high school. Unless the reader was interested in fantasy (my fav genre), I didn’t have a wheelhouse of suggestions to pull from yet, which I found stressful.  Now that I’m more comfortable with YA, and with my collection, I don’t generally panic anymore when students ask for recommendations, but when I started, I would (internally) freak out a little. I guess my overly critical brain thought I might ruin reading for the student if I didn’t have ten awesome suggestions to throw down IMMEDIATELY!!? Or something lol. Clearly I was not being rational. Anyway, regardless of how ridiculous this fear of mine was, it prompted me to create a bunch of “what to read next” posters.

I display the posters on a wall near our fiction section, to help students find their next great read. I tie the recommendations to popular tv shows/movies/books so it acts like netflix’s “Since you likedX, you might like Y” feature.

The posters have also been great for me, because having them handy makes it easy to pull a quick display together. or they act as good guides for when I put baskets of books together for when I bring carts to the classroom for spontaneous checkout sessions.

Im sharing my posters with you all here, they are free to reuse and share. And if you have any suggestions for other topics, I’d love to hear them! Which tv shows/movies/books are trending with your students right now?

Free to reuse and share!

downloadable pdf

 

It’s February! And that means…..drumroll….Valentine’s Day! I have to be honest and admit that V. Day has never been particularly important to me. Frankly, when it comes to commercialized holidays, I’m far more invested in Halloween. BUT, I do remember the stress that came with Valentine’s Day when I was in high school.  If you have a large group of friends or a “bae” (<-I’m so hip with the kids, no?) it would mostly be ok, since you could be pretty much assured of getting a valentine or one of the roses or candy-grams the clubs were always selling. But if you weren’t part of a large social group, it really could be an unenjoyable day. There’s nothing worse than feeling unloved, invisible, or left out, right? ESPECIALLY when you are a teenager.

I remember feeling left out, which is why I always try really hard to make our HS library a comfortable, welcoming, fulfilling space. I try to make it a place that encourages connection and dispels the isolation many of our students feel. So over the last couple weeks I was trying to think of something I could do for Valentine’s Day that would be fun, and which would give all the students a chance to enjoy the day.

Last year I did a “Share Your Library Love” board. That was fun, and great for me (I kept all the hearts, seeing them helps remind me of what things the students find important). But I wanted to do something different this year.

My first idea for this year was to repeat something I did last winter, where I did one of those “take what you need” kindness displays. But I’m hoping to save that one for March and April, which (due to testing) tend to be stressful times for the students.

Finally inspiration struck! While scrolling through the School Librarian’s Workshop Facebook page, I saw a post by a librarian who was awesome enough to share her February Romance Book Display, where she used hilarious literary puns and pickup lines. You can find her post here.

Her display totally inspired me, and I came up with something that is kind of a marriage between her amazing literary pick-up lines idea and the “take what you need” kindness display idea. So I created a bunch of punny literary valentines and every student who wants one can come to the library and get a Valentine.

Every valentine is literary-inspired, the cornier the better. I used “free to reuse” images or free clipart, and made the valentines on Canva.com. Printed them on card stock. Taped them to our mobile whiteboard, and will set that up at the front of the library. I’ll advertise about it on the morning announcements and on the instagram (and share some of the valentines there too, which is why I created them in instagramable square shapes).

And my Valentines gift to you, dear reader, is to share the Valentines I created with you. They are all below, and are free for your reuse. Enjoy!

*Please note that while I came up with a few of the puns myself, many of them are borrowed from other sources online. All of the images, however, were created by me in canva.com.

This year I challenged myself to learn as much as I could about the News Literacy skills needed to navigate in this “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and mis- and dis-information overloaded era we find ourselves in.

To that end, I spent the summer learning as much as I could about News Literacy. I started the school year by offering a “Fighting “Fake News” in the classroom with News Literacy” PD to my teachers during our beginning of the year in-service. In that P.D., I had teachers work to create definitions for the term “fake news,” and discuss the problems inherent with that term. We sussed out various characteristics that might encourage people to call something “fake news,” (propaganda, clickbait, deepfakes, bias, etc etc) and decided a better term is “unreliable news” or “unreliable information.” We explored various reasons for the current “fake news phenomena,” as well as many excellent tools and strategies we could teach to our students to help them become better, more critical news consumers.

The P.D. session was very successful, and the feedback from staff was excellent. Several teachers commented favorably on how I managed to teach about this topic in a neutral way, using examples that showed both left-leaning and right-leaning agendas. Unreliable news does not come from just one side of our political spectrum, after all! A few people actually commented that throughout the presentation they couldn’t tell which political party I might favor. In other words, I managed to teach about this topic, without indicating my own political preferences or biases. This was pretty much the best compliment I could have been given, because I did make a pointed effort to show that we can talk about news literacy and “fake news” in the classroom, without having it become left wing politics vs. right wing politics. I think the fact that even the term “fake news” has such implicit political connotations right now is one reasons many of my teachers had been leery about tackling it in the classrooms. It is important to show our staff and students that we can present this information in a balanced and neutral way. We can talk about how the term “fake news” is being used in politics today, without the lesson becoming “politically charged.”

Our superintendent, assistant superintendent, assistant principals, and several other district office administrators also attended the P.D. Which wasn’t intimidating AT ALL for a third year teacher lol :). But the feedback from everyone was great. I also learned something important about my own assumptions. You see, I had expected most teachers to have a general understanding of good News Literacy skills, but it turned out that almost everything I covered in the PD was completely new information to them! I realized news literacy skills was an unfulfilled need at my school, and I decided to try to tackle it.

After this PD session, I saw an increase in collaboration requests from teachers wanting me to come in and teach their classes more about news literacy skills. I pushed into various social studies classes, english classes, and a few elective classes who I had never been asked to collaborate with before. I was even invited to teach our TV Studio Club students about responsible journalism and what to look out for to avoid unreliable news. At the halfway point of this school year, I’ve had far more collaboration opportunities, thanks to this demand for news literacy skills, than I did during the same time period last year. These successful collaborations and PD sessions even inspired me to push out of my comfort zone professionally. In November, I presented this information in my first ever webinar (which is archived at AASL ecollab, under “The “Fake News” Problem), and in March I’ll be presenting it in person at the annual Pennsylvania School Library Association’s conference!

Most recently, I was able to do a 3 day news literacy mini-unit for our Pop Culture elective. It was SOO successful! To celebrate, I thought I’d share a bunch of the resources and lessons I’ve done this year for news literacy.  You can also follow me on twitter (@kelseybogan @gvhs_librarymc) or instagram (@gvhslibrary) to be sure you are alerted whenever I share more resources. I’ll definitely be sharing all the resources I compile for my conference presentation in March or April.)

Everything below is free for you to re-use with your own students and teachers. I simply ask that my work be credited, and that you please do not re-use any pictures of GVHS students that may be included.

Pop Culture News Literacy Mini-Unit – This link takes you to the powerpoint and resources I used for the lessons in the Pop Culture min-unit this week.

Professional Development Presentation – This link takes you to the powerpoint and resources I used at the beginning of the year to teach my staff about News Literacy. E

TV Studio Collaborative mini-lesson – This link takes you to the presentation I did for my TV Studio Club students.

AASL webinar presentation – This link takes you to the presentation powerpoint and resources I used in my AASL webinar in November. You can also find the archived webinar itself on AASL’s ecollab site.

Using the F.A.C.T. method to evaluate credibility of a news source – This link takes you to a very short page I created to help advise students how to quickly evaluate a news source. I created the F.A.C.T. method for evaluating news sources. My method was inspired by the Four Moves and a Habit by Michael Caulfield. You can learn more about Four Moves here.

Evaluating News Sources – This link takes you to the presentation and resources I used to teach 7th grade social studies students about evaluating news sources. The middle school librarian and I were able to collaborate with the entire 7th grade social studies team this year to present this lesson to their students. We did this right before they began their Political Science unit.

I hope to continue to share the work I and my teachers do to implement critical news literacy skills into the classroom, and would love if you shared your favorite news literacy collaborations/lessons with us as well!

Happy teaching, friends 🙂

 

We’ve all been here, right? Shrinking budgets has necessitated many of us becoming Librarian-MacGyvers. We learn how to get creative, crafty, and use our considerable problem solving skills to come up with innovative (and cost-effective) solutions to many of our needs. Here are some of my favorite creative solutions and re-purposing hacks. Hopefully you may find some of these things helpful. And I’d love to hear from you on any great MacGyver-y library hacks you’ve come up.

1. Repurposing old magazine holders –
   1. I don’t know about you, but I have hundreds of these plastic magazine holders taking up storage space. One way I use them, is to put them behind the books, so the books are pushed forward on the shelf (and are therefore easier to see). Since they are plastic, they won’t provide good breeding and feeding zones for pests of any kind!
   2. 
2. Clear sticky-back shelves for displaying in unusual spaces
   1. I have this one whole section of my library where there are no bookshelves whatsoever. I was trying to figure out a way to display books back there, and figured I’d have to purchase some kind of display shelving (which would be expensive), when I stumbled upon these clear sticky-back “shelves.” They were super cheap, and worked like a charm creating display areas pretty much anywhere in the library 🙂  Here is the link to the ones I purchased on amazon.
   2. 
3. Brochure Holders as Bookmark Displays
   1. This is one I’m sure many others have figured out as well, but just in case, I’ll share it here. Pamphlet or brochure holders make excellent bookmark holders!
   2. 
   3. 
   4. This is the link to the one I purchased (see picture above)
   5. The harry potter bookmarks seen above can be purchased on my TPT Account: The Don’t Shush Me Librarian
4. Use Weeded books for … pretty much everything!
   1. We use weeded books for so many things:
      1. Maker activities like book trees, bookmarks, corner bookmarks, building challenges, book folding challenges, “create a book dominoes chain” challenges, etc.
      2. 
      3. I’m also intending on using them as shelf dividers/labels in my nonfiction section.  A lot of people use empty magazine holders or binders for this as well! (In the picture below you can see what I mean by “shelf dividers” where another librarian used magazine holders to divide the shelf. I’m going to use some of my big weeded reference tomes for this purpose!)
      4. 
5. Plastic clothes hangers + binder clips = poster storage
   1. This idea was completely inspired by another librarian on the facebook boards! I cannot find her original post but she shared the idea of using pants hangers to store posters.  I went to purchase a bunch of pants hangers but found they were too costly for me. So I purchased cheap plastic regular hangers and then used binder clips to turn them into “pants hangers.”
   2. I had this extra closet rod sitting unused in my basement, and my storage room had two bookcases that were the correct distance apart from each other to allow me to easily mount the rod between them. And voila! Easy, peasey, poster and display storage!
   3. 
6. Old bulletin board = excellent puzzle foundation!
   1. When I decided to add brain break activities to the library last year, I knew I wanted to add a community jigsaw puzzle station. I was concerned about pieces easily sliding off to the floor if it was just on a table, though. I also didn’t want to commit a whole table to only ever being able to be used for the puzzle. Luckily we had an extra bulletin board laying around. The frame of the board keeps the puzzle together beautifully, and its really easy to move it around. Many of my students actually like putting it on the floor to work on it, so that works out great.
   2. 
7. Use colored duct tape to create borders on displays.
   1. I love using colored duct tape (actually I usually buy 3M) as borders on my displays. Not only does it look good, but it keeps things in place lol.
   2. 
8. Colorful wrapping paper makes excellent backgrounds
   1. When painting is not an option, I’ve found that wrapping paper and colored tape are an excellent alternative for adding bursts of color to the library. I used colored wrapping papers to cover the backs of my bookcases when I genre-fied this year. I can’t believe how much it impacts the whole vibe of the space!
   2. 
9. Bookends when you don’t have book display stands
   1. This is another one I’m sure many librarians already know, but I’ll share it anyway.
   2. I never have enough actual book display stands, so I end up using our extra book ends for this purpose. The metal ones can be bent back a little bit, which allows it to comfortable prop the display books up.
   3. 
   4. I use the book ends to display signage as well. For instance, all of my genre signs are standing up thanks to book ends 🙂
   5. 

What MacGyver Librarian hacks are you using at your library?

If you’ve been in library land lately, you’ve probably seen all of the great collaborative activities that many libraries are offering. Whether it is a community coloring poster, stick together mosaic, or rubik’s cube challenge, these activities are great ways we can offer opportunities for community building, unplugged socialization, and de-stressing. I am a big fan of the giant community coloring posters. And, more importantly, so are my students! Unfortunately, we don’t have a poster printer.  And we don’t have room in the budget to keep buying them. I decided to challenge myself to come up with a way of creating these things, without a poster printer.

So, without further ado, here is the explanation of how I create these giant coloring posters, for free.

But first, a gift for you! On my website you can download some of my Giant Coloring Poster Designs – Just click the link for End Cap Coloring Sheets.

1. Figure out how big you want it to be.
   1. Make sure the size you pick fits on one of your tables!
2. Create the design
   1. I do this on canva.com, but I’ve also done it in Microsoft Paint!
   2. Find adult coloring patterns online.
      1. I get them on google by filtering for “free to use, share, and modify.”
      2. 
   3. If you want to include wording, place a white shape over the design. Then you can add the words you want on the white part.
      1. 
      2. 
3. Tape your paper to the wall or projector screen.
   1. I use the back side (white side) of Art Paper rolls. You know, the stuff you use to cover bulletin boards? I like that because its on a roll, and you can make it as long as you need.
4. Use your projector to project the image onto the paper.
   1. 
   2. 
5. Get your sharpies and start tracing!
   1. Pro Tip: Give the sharpies to students and let them get tracing!
   2. Pro Tip: Put something behind the paper if you use sharpies, or you’ll have black marks on the wall or screen. I maaaay have learned this lesson the hard way. (I now have a big piece of laminated art paper on my wall to protect it)
   3. 
6. put the poster on a table for students with a bucket of markers
   1. 
7. When finished, laminate and hang!
   1. Here are some pictures that show how I’ve used these posters to add color and customization to my h.s. library.

Designing and creating the posters is definitely a time commitment, but as long as you have rolls of paper, and sharpies, it does not cost any money! I have my student assistants do the tracing and they get done pretty quickly! Last week I challenged one of them to design the next poster on canva herself, and she did a GREAT job. So its no longer really a time commitment for me at all. yay! Some other pros to creating these yourself include:

1. You can customize them to say anything. Favorite quotes, school name, branding & logos, etc.
2. You can make them any size you’d like.
3. You can create many smaller ones and use use them as giveaways (either before, or after they’ve been colored in).
   1. For example, I use them in my PD sessions as gifts to raffle off to teachers who attend my PD sessions!
   2. 

Questions, concerns, comments? Connect with me on instagram @gvhslibrary or twitter @GVHS_LibraryMc or @kelseybogan.

School Librarians wear many, many hats throughout the course of their day. When we go through our MSLIS programs and our trainings, we learn about some of those hats. Teacher, collaborator, administrator, tech support, crisis manager, collection developer, etc. We prepare for it. We train for it. We’re ready (ish :). In addition to all of that, we’re also purchasers, accountable for responsibly spending our library budgets. Whether our budget comes from the district itself, PTO groups, donations, fundraising, our own pockets, or some combination thereof, it can be very difficult to decide where to allocate our increasingly limited funds, while still providing excellent library services to our students.

Here are some of the things I do to try to stretch my budget. What kinds of budget saving hacks do you use?

Stretching the Budget:

1. Use book tape instead of clear label protectors
   1. This year I’ve discovered the joy of using book tape, instead of clear label protectors. I like that you can buy the tape in a variety of widths, and that you can use one wide piece right down the spine to cover all the labels in one go.
   2. Extra tip for fans of using label protectors: Follett sends extra label protectors with your order, so if you purchase from titlewave, you usually end up with rolls of extra labels!
2. Avoid paying for book processing
   1. I personally prefer to process books in-house, whenever possible. Our library assistant does most of it, but I also have student assistants who are capable of putting labels and book covers on. We save money by purchasing books as cheaply as possible on amazon and then processing ourselves.
   2. If processing/cataloging in-house isn’t an option, buy from vendors that don’t charge extra for book processing.
3. Buy paperbacks of trending books
   1. When buying duplicates of currently trending books, I recommend purchasing the duplicates in paperback. Not all books need to be durable enough to last forever. If its trendy now, but isn’t likely to be popular enough to need multiple copies in a few years, I buy 1 or 2 in hardcover and the rest in paperback. For example, I knew that with the movie release, Crazy Rich Asians would be in demand this year, but probably won’t maintain this level of popularity. So I purchased several in paperback.
   2. I know a few years down the line I’ll need to weed no longer trending books out of the collection (I’m looking at you, 7 hardcover copies of Twilight), and it won’t be as painful, knowing I only paid the paperback price.
4. Buy books gently used
   1. Ok this is something I just started this year, and I have NO regrets! I met with some vendors and put together lists of hardcover nonfiction books I wanted to add to the collection. The costs were SO expensive, with each nonfiction book costing about $40 (<200 pages). Even if I could spend $1000, it would only be about 25 books!
   2. I went on amazon and price checked some of the same titles. I realized I could find gently used copies for extremely lower costs. For example, one of the books that was $40 from the vendor, was available on a third party seller on amazon for under $10.
   3. I stuck to the “very good” or “like new” ratings, and chose copies from sellers with great reviews and ratings. I was able to get 100 books instead of just 25. And, as you can see in the picture below, they really do look just like new.
   4. 
5. Work with a sales person instead of ordering online
   1. I purchased some furniture from Demco last year, and instead of just putting items in the shopping cart on the website, and ordering that way, I called demco and worked with a sales person. She ended up working with me to create a quote, and she included discounts and price drops that were not available on the website.
6. Solicit donations
   1. Want to add games, puzzles, or cards? Send out requests for donations to teachers and the community. These kinds of things do not need to be brand new. Hand me downs are FINE! I’ve had so many puzzles donated that I doubt I’ll ever need to purchase one.
7. Make your own giant coloring sheets
   1. Community coloring sheets are fantastic to have in your library. They can encourage mind-fullness, social collaboration, and more, among students. They encourage students to unplug from devices and work with each other on a common goal. But at about $15 per sheet, they can get costly. You can make them yourself, fairly easily. ESPECIALLY if you have student assistants or helpers you can put to work on them.
   2. They look like incredible, colorful, graffiti and they did not cost me anything but time. I’m posting a blog entry next week with full description of how I create my own giant coloring posters without a poster printer!
   3. 
8. Print adult coloring sheets for free online
   1. Want to offer your students a coloring station? Don’t purchase them! Just search google for open source adult coloring sheets and print them for free at school. (Filter for Usage rights: Free to use, share, or modify)
9. Don’t pay for poster printing
   1. Use rasterbator.net or another similar service (despite it’s ridiculous name, rasterbator is the best one I’ve yet found, in terms of quality end product) to blow images up – rather than paying for poster printing. Yes it is more work, but it looks great and is free! You just upload an image and the website blows the image up and spread it across multiple standard printer pages. It provides you with the blown up image in a printable pdf. You then have to tape the pages together, but once you do, you cannot tell they weren’t printed on a poster printer. The cool thing is you can set the exact size you want.
   2. Just be sure that the image you upload is as high resolution as possible, so the blown up image is clear and not pixelated.
   3. In the pictures below you can see how I used rasterbator.net to print my genre signs as 11inx23inch. You can’t even tell that the poster is stitched together from three separate pages. They just look like they were printed on a poster printer!
   4. 
   5. 
10. Design your own signage
    1. Signage is very costly, and often just not what you are looking for. Use free platforms like canva.com or postermywall.com to create your own custom signage.
    2. 
11. Design your own bookmarks
    1. I find it very difficult to spend budget money on things like bookmarks. Last year I purchased two reams of card stock and started designing and printing my own.
    2. Good opportunity to include your branding or customized info!
    3. And they don’t have to take that long to make. Canvas.com has a bookmark template that has hundreds of free, ready made styles and layouts.
    4. Below are pictured some of the bookmarks I’ve made on canva.com.
    5. 
    6. 
12. Haggle with database providers
    1. Just because a vendor SAYS that a database costs “x” dollars does not mean it really costs that much. Make sure you are haggling with them on cost, because I’ve found that they generally DO have some ability to work with you on price.
13. Work with consortiums and your IUs (intermediate units)
    1. Being part of a consortium, and working with your local IU, is a great way to get discounts and better pricing from vendors.
14. Laminate art paper to create cheap “whiteboards.”
    1. When paper is laminated you can write and erase on it using dry erase markers. Voila cheap whiteboard-like material!
15. Say yes to vendors who want to set up meetings…
    1. A lot of them will give you like 5 free books when they come for the visit. You’re under no obligation to order from the vendor just because you had a meeting and accepted complimentary books 🙂
16. Save on genre stickers
    1. Buy colored circles or rectangles and cut them in half – makes the box of labels go twice as far.
    2. Also, save on series stickers by making them yourself. If you have sheets of spine labels, you can make a template in Word that will let you use those same labels to for self made series labels!
    3. 
17. Ask other departments if they would split costs of things with you.
    1. Example, if your english dept. loves a database that you’re having trouble fitting in the budget, offer to split the cost with them. Part of making your budget stretch means being ruthless about asking for money from people. It can feel awkward the first couple of times but you’d be surprised at how often you can get people to contribute.
18. Bonus Tip: Have a binder full of “wish list” items.
    1. You may not believe this, but it is not at all uncommon for librarians to come into unexpected money, sometimes very suddenly, and which often needs to be spent with very little notice. It is VERY helpful if you have a binder of wish list items ready, just in case! You never want to be unprepared if someone asks you what the library needs!
    2. Example: Last year I was told that the class of 2017 had over-fundraised and had funds they were looking to donate to the school. I was asked “does the library need anything?” “Absolutely!” I responded, while reaching behind my desk to grab my “just in case” binder, chock full of wish list items. Moral of the story? Our library was gifted with furniture to create a brand new lounge area, and I’ve since updated my wish list binder with the next bunch of dream items. You know, just in case! 🙂
       1. 

I just finished genre-fying our high school library! I know a lot of librarians struggle with the “should I or shouldn’t I?” conundrum when it comes to genre-fication. I thought I would document my journey here in case it helps anyone else with their decision and process!

Genre-fying (grouping fiction books according to similar genres/topics/themes like a bookstore usually does) is something that has been a big topic of conversation in library land over the last decade or so. There are many pros and cons batted around, and many other blogs and resources go into those so I’m not going to re-hash that here now. I’ll just say that, in the end, I got sick of watching students wander the fiction section looking ambivalent and eventually either leaving with no books, or just checking out the old favorites. It became clear to me, after two years at my library, that the old library setup was doing nothing to excite students about reading. Being faced with a collection of 5000 books in author A-Z order, spines out, was overwhelming, boring, and inefficient. So, I decided to genre-fy.

The following information is my very detailed walkthrough of how I approached the process. I’ll include the mistakes I made as well as the triumphs!

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Should I, or Shouldn’t I?

• How do you know if you should genre-fy? 
  • Talk to your students, talk to your staff, talk to your admin! Get feedback, test the waters. Visit genre-fied libraries if you can, to see how it is working for them. You are the librarian for your school, so you are really the best person to decide if genre-fication makes sense for your school. But you don’t exist in a vacuum! Always bounce the idea off as many stakeholders as possible.
• How did I decide?
  • After observing students struggling to enjoy browsing the library and frequently walking away without a book, I started thinking about genre-fying. Then, last year I started a Roaming Library program, where I would bring baskets of books on a cart to the english classrooms for 10 minute browse and checkout sessions.
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  • I always genre-fied the baskets around main themes or topics (like horror, adventure, overcoming obstacles, if you like 13 reasons why, etc etc). I saw so much more engagement in the students than I ever saw in the library. I quickly realized that by giving students a smaller, more focused selection of books to look through, they were finding things that interested them more often. They were not getting overwhelmed by the rows and rows of alphabetized books. They were not getting frustrated at not knowing where to start. This year, after I did the first round of Roaming Library, I just instantly knew that I had to genre-fy the library.
  • I figured, bookstores must be doing it for a reason! I also figured that, grocery stores do it it. I mean, just imagine if grocery stores had items in order by brand name instead grouped by like items. Imagine if you wanted chips, but Lays chips were in one place, and Herrs chips in a completely other place. It wouldn’t make any sense! How frustrating would it be to grocery shop for the items you need to cook just one meal. Now imagine you are someone who doesn’t even like cooking! Imagine how much more frustrating and disheartening grocery shopping would be for you then. This is how I imagine the standard library setup is to students, let alone to students who do not like to read. No wonder my students are so rarely browsing and checking out at my library. It is simply not a pleasurable activity. This is why genre-fication made sense to me.
  • I also polled the students and they overwhelming said “YES!!” to genre-fying. I spoke with english teachers and they were intrigued. A little less certain than students, but optimistically intrigued.  I checked in with my principal and he said “You’re the expert and it’s your classroom to manage as you see fit.” So I began the genre-fication process!

First step: Weeding/Getting to know your collection

Genre-fying is not a quick or simple process. The first step is to get to know your collection really, really well. Know your student’s reading habits and preferences. Know your teacher’s teaching styles and annual assignments. I started my genre-fying process two years ago, really, when I started a big weed in Fiction. I had just started at the high school, and I found that weeding was a great way to get to know the collection, because you’re touching each book, examining it, learning about it’s publication date and popularity. I think this is the first step to genre-fication. If you don’t know your collection or your student’s needs, it will make things much harder. Trust me on this, because as you will see below, I made mistakes that I later had to correct, after I knew my students needs better.

Second step: Deciding on your Genres

Once you’ve weeded down and/or familiarized yourself w. the collection, it is time to decide on the genres you’ll use. It is a good idea to talk to people again about this. There are MANY options and the genres that work best for one school may be very different than the ones that will work best for your school.

I initially chose based on what seemed best to me. Later I had to re-do it and then I based it on students requests, language students use when asking for books, what I was seeing get checked out the most, and the English assignments. For instance we often have reading assignments that ask students to read books with themes of identity, culture, or adversity. This fact informed my choice to have genres that served that need. I knew I didn’t want a ton of genres, just for simplicity’s sake, so the ones I created were pretty broad at first.

• My initial genres (I had to change them later, see below) were:
  • Fantasy
  • Sci-Fi
  • Classics & Literary
  • Horror/Mystery/Suspense
  • Historical Fiction
  • Realistic Fiction

Third step: Deciding on your labeling & Cataloging plan

Next you need to decide on how you will handle labeling and cataloging. There are many options here and you will need to decide what works best for you.

• Some common Cataloging Options:
  • Change call # prefix (ex: F MYS to signal Mystery genre)
  • Add copy category to indicate genre
  • Add sublocation to indicate genre
• Some common Labeling Options:
  • Colored labels on spine
  • colored transparent spine label covers
  • new spine labels that include genre name
  • genre graphic stickers (usually purchased from demco or similar)
  • handmade labels/stickers (some people design their own custom)

For cataloging, I decided I would add a copy category and sublocation to each book, to indicate the genre. I did not want to go the call # prefix route (just personal preference, there is nothing at all wrong with that method! Many librarians use the prefix method!). Partially it was because I did not want to print and replace all of the spine labels, and partly it was because I just don’t think my students would understand it when looking in the catalog.  Adding the copy category and sublocation would work best for me because the category will let me run reports according to genre, and the sublocation is easily viewed when searching Destiny catalog.

For labels I decided to do a simple colored sticker on the spine, right above the spine label. I chose this because I like the simplicity and visual punch it gives. I feel it is easy, cheap, and quick to label them. Its very easy to cover or replace the sticker if I need to change the book’s genre for any reason. It is very easy to quickly scan the shelves and see that a book is shelved in the wrong section. So I designated a color for each of my genres and ordered 3/4inch circle labels from Demco. We cut the circles in half and sit them above the spine label like a little hat. I cut them because it makes the box go twice as far for the money, and I think it looks sharp, visually! For books that have additional genres or big topics (like romance or novels in verse) I can easily add a second colored sticker below the spine label, like a sub genre. (In the pic below you can see my labels. The number written on the label indicates the school year it was added to the collection. so 17 means it was added in 2017-2018 school year. This helps students find new books, and makes it easy for me to find them and avoid them when weeding!)

Fourth step: Start labeling each book

This is the part a lot of librarians dread because you need to decide which genre each book belongs in. I know a lot of people struggle with this because most books cross genres. I think you just need to not overthink it. For Most books, it will be very obvious which genre they belong in. You just decide where your kids would most expect it. This is why it is important to know your students reading habits when genre-fying. If you use Follett Destiny you can call Follett and ask for a “genre assist” report. They send you a spreadsheet that helps you decide for each book which genre it is. I also used goodreads.com a lot for extra help because goodreads users tag books, often by genre. You can see which genre it gets tagged in most. When in doubt, I deferred to the goodreads genre with the most tags or my personal opinion 🙂

Spreadsheet looks like this:

Fifth step: Re-Assess

This is a good point to stop and reassess your process. Ask yourself questions to determine if you are on the right track or if you need to make changes. Do you have enough of each genre? Too many or too few of certain genres?

If a genre is too big: You may want to consider weeding this genre down or splitting it. For instance, I initially thought I’d just have a genre for “realistic” but it was WAAAY too big. So I re-thought it and ended up getting rid of “realistic” and having three other genres instead. I also decided at this point that I did not like the idea of a “classics” section. I realized it was unlikely that students would ever set foot in that section unless they had to for an assignment. Since the point of genre-fying is to encourage browsing, this seemed anathema to me. So I had to go back through and find all the “classics” labeled books, and I relabeled them to other genres. Most ended up in Historical Fiction, but many made it into horror (dracula, frankenstein), and adventure (huckleberry finn, treasure island) and so on.

These are the notes I made when deciding on my final genres. I also used the library instagram to get feedback from students on genres they wanted.

Unfortunately this step can require a lot of back tracking and re-doing work, but for me it was necessary because at this point I realized i was on the wrong track to serve my students. The large realistic section was not going to be helpful, so I had to re-do it. The same with the original “Classics” genre. And I’m glad I did, because with the way things are now, all of my genres are very similar in size, which seems like a good thing to me. I did have to go through my collection again and re-label a ton of the books at this point, since I had changed genres, but it was worth it.  I did my initial genre choosing during my first year at the school and I did not know the students or the teachers well enough. Two years later I know them a lot better, and felt that some of the genre choices I had made two years ago were not good choices.

Sixth step: Plan the footprint

Maybe not everyone is as particular about details as I am. But just in case you are, I’ll share this step. There was no way I was comfortable just “winging it” and moving books without knowing exactly how many shelves I would need for each section. So I thoroughly planned out the footprint of the books before I did anything else.

So I went through each bookcase (our fiction has 40ish bookcases with 6 shelves each) and lumped the books from that bookcase into genre groups on each shelf. We had 6 shelves and 7 genres so that worked well. Then I went through, with a measuring tape, and measured how many linear inches of each genre I had. Then i decided how many inches I would want per shelf (our shelves are 34 inches wide so I decided that each shelf would start with 23 inches of books, leaving enough room to grow into it and to have outward facing books on each shelf.)  I did the math, and was able to figure out how many shelves I would need for each genre. I was then able to configure it so that there would be an empty bookcase in between the genres, so there is plenty of room to grow. In the meantime, I’m going to use those cases to do spotlight displays of nonfiction books that would pair well with the genres!

I also knew I wanted to do something to really make the fiction section pop and stand out after it is genre-fied, so I decided to decorate the backs of the bookcases in the color of the genre on that case. I went on amazon and had a blast hunting down art paper and wrapping paper that I could use for this purpose. Luckily I had held back some of my supplies budget and was able to get approval to purchase some of these papers. Then I created a layout and started playing with how I could configure the shelves, how many shelves could be left open for outward facing books, etc. This is what I came up with.

7th step: Create the signage

Next I went ahead and created my signage and posters with postermywall.com. This was fun! I knew I wanted the signs to be larger then standard paper. So I set custom dimensions in postermywall.com for 11inches high x 24ish inches wide. Designed my posters. Then I put the document through rasterbator.net to blow it up to the large size I wanted.

Here are the genre signs I created. You’ll see signs for “Quick Picks” and “Love & Romance.” They are not actual genres but they will be some of the rotating displays I’ll have up on the empty bookcases I allotted for.

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8th step: Move the books

Now that I knew for certain how everything would layout and the maximum configuration, it was time to do the actual moving. I did this during our two days of parent conferences this week. Two full days with no students, and parents don’t generally conference with me so I had plenty of time. Luckily my administration approved my assistant to come in on those days as well, so we were able to really tackle the process. My assistant started scanning the books into resource lists so we could then use the resource lists to make the cataloging changes (detailed below). Meanwhile, I started moving books and hanging the colored paper on the back of the bookcases. It was absolutely backbreaking work. BUT it looks sooooooo nice. Finally, we put up the beautiful signs!

 

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This slideshow requires JavaScript.

9th step: Re-catalog the books

Finally we finished off re-cataloging the books so the catalog would show their genres and locations. I did this in a multi-step way.

First – I created a separate resource list for each genre in Destiny. Then my assistant scanned each book into the appropriate resource list.

Second – I created the copy categories, one for each genre. I titled them exactly the same way I titled the resource list for each genre.

Third – I created a sublocation for each genre. Again, I titled them exactly the same way I titled the resource lists and copy categories. Keeping the names consistent is good for consistency.

Fourth – I added the copy category to the books. In destiny I went to Catalog – Update copies – batch update. Selected “add category” from dropdown. Selected “update all copies in – list.” Rinse and repeat for all genres.

Fifth I added sublocation to the books. In Destiny went to Catalog- Update copies – Global Update. Select with: category and make: sublocation. Rinse and repeat for each genre.

10th step: Advertise Advertise Advertise & Enjoy the results!

And voila! Genre-fication is completed! Now It’s time to advertise to staff and students. I shared my story on the library instagram and twitter with students and staff. I also mention it to literally every single person who talks to me throughout the school day. I told english teachers and invited them to bring classes down to see the new setup. It was fun watching students browse it today! Today we had 33 books checked out. That’s a lot for our library! The same day last year……. we had 1 book checked out 🙂

If you have any other questions about how this process worked for me, please feel free to reach out on twitter @gvhslibrary or @kelseybogan or on Instagram @gvhslibrary!

Happy Reading!

Hello World (Again)

This is my letter of intent. Today is the day that I gleefully wipe the dust off of this old book blog, and reinvent it! I began this blog in 2014 as a class assignment in my Young Adult Literature class. I was attending Drexel to earn my Masters in Science in Library & Information Science Degree. In 2015 I earned my degree and started working as a school librarian………… Fast forward 3 years and its now 2018! I have been a school librarian for 3 years and now (finally!) feel I have my feet under me enough to attempt to keep up with a blog. Yay!  But I’m going to reinvent it from a book blog over to a Librarian Blog.

So, going forward this blog will hopefully be full of reflections on my adventures as a High School Librarian. I hope these reflections and ruminations will be helpful to other librarians, educators, information professionals, library students, etc. But if not, it will certainly be helpful to me as I’d like to be able to look back in future and actually remember some of the outrageous fun I’m having as a librarian. So here we go!

The posts to come after this should be more interesting and include pictures and actual lesson plans, programming plans, etc. This is just a statement of intent. I’ve opened the can of worms officially now 🙂

****Posts after this one on my home screen are leftovers from the olden days when it was a book blog. I didn’t see any reason to delete the old posts so I’m leaving them. ****

Here’s some pictures of what my library looked like the day I started. Wait until you see all the changes I’ve made since then on a limited budget….. woooo it has been a fun 3 years!

And heres a list of some of the projects I’ve tackled in the last two years at my HS Library:

Year One:

• Collection Dev: Added LGBTQIA+ collection
• Collection Dev: Added Graphic Novel collection
• Collection Dev: Added Books in Spanish collection
• Physical Space & Rules: Moving from “silent library” to “learning commons” format (i.e. not a quiet library)
• Collection Dev: Started Weeding Fiction (gentle, timid to start)
• Collection Dev: Started Genre-fying (research & genre selection)
• Instructional Goals: Trying to get teachers to collaborate (first year is tough!)

Year Two

• Community Building – Social Media accounts – Instagram & Twitter
• Community Building – Games & Cards
• Community Building – Community Coloring sheets
• Community Building – Community Puzzle
• Collection Dev: Partially Genre-fied (stickered each book but kept in dewey layout for now)
• Collection Dev: Added series labels to all fiction books (SOOO helpful!)
• Collection Dev: Added ebooks collection
• Collection Dev: Researching potential databases to add or change for next year
• Physical Space – Massive shifting of every book in the library to conserve and restructure floor space availability
• Physical Space – Big push for adding color and decorations to our previously stark library.
• Instructional: Saw a serious increase in collaborative opportunities, especially with social studies and english.
• Instruction/Collaboration/Reading: Started the Roaming Library  program where each month I bring a cart of books to the classrooms for on the spot check out.

Year Three (That’s this year)

• Instruction/Leadership: Offering PD sessions at in-services (Fake News/News Literacy Focus)
• Instruction: # of collaboration requests has skyrocketed already this year (and its only october!) YAY! More requests from Science dept. than previous years, several social studies and english have asked for Fake News collaborations.
• Community Building – Still big focus on Instagram & Twitter
• Leadership: Several staff members asking me for advice on running a school social media account.
• Leadership: Cross-school collaborations – worked with middle school librarian to bring News Literacy lessons to her 7th grade social studies classes.
• Leadership/Prof Development: Accepted by AASL to run a webinar on Fake News in 2 weeks!
• Collection Dev: Finished Ruthless Weed of Fiction (yay!)
• Collection Dev: Began Ruthless Weed of Nonfiction
• Collection Dev: Began researching new physical nonfiction books to add as collection is weeded down.
• Collection Dev: New Databases added (Gale), old ones removed
• Community Building – Added more games & collaborative activities thanks to a grant
• Community Building – Added a Daily Riddle & Trivia boards
• Physical Space – New lounge furniture added (thanks to monetary donation)
• Physical Space – Restructuring of space, many large stacks were moved allowing us to have a second lounge area = multi-spaces now! More usable space!
• Collection/Physical Space: We are gearing up to do the full on genre-fication next week! Books will be moved into their genre groups!
• Leadership/Instruction: Several teachers requesting I collaborate with them on their SLOs and Growth plans.