Discarding a dumpster full of books each month is necessary.

I just read “Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the March on Washington” by Walter Naegle, Michael G. Long, Jacqueline Houtman. It was good! It felt like it was on the younger end of YA.

I used to do it all the time for my grade 11-12 students. Sometimes I never got a response, but if they did respond, they always shared the article. Many of them offered to talk to my students if they had questions.

It’s my favorite time of the year (when your lists start coming out)!!!!

We live in Shanghai, so I have to wait for a digital release 😭 I’m moving to Zurich in July though, and some people on the interview panel heard you and Amanda speak at the film festival there earlier this year! Very jealous.

Just finished reading That Librarian by @librarianjones.com. I think I injured my neck from nodding vigorously as I read.

They also LOVE Alex’s Good Fortune! Thanks for sharing the activities 🤓 I was so happy to find your books!

The front cover of the book We Are Lion Dancers. The cover had two children holding up the lion dancing costume for lunar new year.

Our shipment was delayed, so @bshum79.bsky.social’s “Mooncakes Mean Family” didn’t make it time for Mid-Autumn Festival, but his “We Are Lion Dancers” made it for New Year! A kid already tried to steal it off my desk before I cataloged it 🤣 it’s going to be popular! #BookSky #LibrarySky #TLsky

We grew up in the country, so we were all on well water, but my cousins grew up in the suburbs. They were on city water, and they both went to the wastewater facility in elementary and middle school.

A high ponytail really would have pulled the whole look together 😂

I clocked her banned books sweater right away! Loved it

Wikipedia is a better place to begin your research now than Google is because Google is just loaded with garbage, even if you're *really good* at your search terms. Wikipedia at least gives you places to begin easily.

I think this hits that sweet spot of browsable vs searchable. Kids can walk up and find topics easily, but we can also search for a specific book in the catalog and find it on the shelf now! #TLsky #LibrarySky #EduSky

Library shelving units against the wall. Each shelf has one sign with a Dewey number and topic and picture on the left-hand side. The books are spine out. Each shelf also has a front facing book on display.

Library shelving units against the wall. Each shelf has one sign with a Dewey number and topic and picture on the left-hand side. The books are spine out. Each shelf also has a front facing book on display.

Our nonfiction reorganization project is complete! We ditched the baskets and did a HEAVY weed. Now each shelf is spine out but only about a single topic. We had to change lots of call numbers to move books to the right shelf, but kids are already finding more books!

Me holding the book Bury Your Gays. The title is big neon purple, orange and pink letters with an LA landscape of palm trees inside of the letters

Starting fall break with Bury Your Gays by @chucktingle.bsky.social. Only reading this in the daylight hours because I don’t normally do horror 😂 #BookSky

Yeah I agree. I think Metis is uniquely wonderful for an early years setting. My friend did just reclassify her nonfiction collection to topic based whole word call numbers (inspired by Metis) and her circulation has increased wildly. Like some sections by 500%

Terrible! I reclassified my early years collection to Metis and it is SO much better. Circulation doubled because it makes sense to students AND, as a bonus, it’s not so heinously offensive.

Three library shelving units. Each shelf has a sign with a Dewey number, a topic, and a picture to represent the topic. Only 2 of the 9 shelves are more than 50% full

We started moving the nonfiction books today! I love shelves that aren’t totally full 😍 Once all books are moved, we’ll do another weed for books that haven’t circed in 6 years. Then I’ll go through each shelf and start the Franken-Dewey so it’s one topic on each shelf #TLsky #EduSky #LibrarySky

Yaaasss. DDC is the worst, but I don’t have the staffing, time, or resources in this library to do a full reclassification to whole word call number. This is like the bootleg version of that lol. I reclassified our early years library using Metis, and it is amazing. Gottta ditch Dewey!

So many ancient books, so little time 🤣

Franken-Dewey! I’m making each shelf about one topic. So it’s a lot of weeding and changing call numbers. For example, we’ll have a 305 shelf about community workers that I’ll put all the jobs books on.

Hahahaha it’s my fav thing to do. It’s like finding a time capsule 😂 I work in China and I just weeded a book about the Mayflower from 1969

I’m holding an extremely old elementary nonfiction book about football

How will we live without this book about American football from 1992? 😂🤣 #EduSky #TLsky #LibrarySky

The nonfiction reorganization is starting with aggressive weeding. It’s the low hanging fruit: damaged, duplicates, and extremely old. Once this weed is done and the books are back in DDC order, we’ll run a report for books not checked out in 6 years and weed those too. We just can’t find them now.

I’ve never had the physical shelf space to reorganize and dynamic shelf-ify (shout out @kelseybogan.bsky.social) my elementary collections. How did you do it?

I was a whole school librarian for 7 years and reorganizing to make it more browseable is easy to do with MS/HS nonfiction collections because circ is lower and the curricular support is often digital, but my elementary nonfiction sections have been large and they get SO much circ.

I love talking to librarians about this stuff 🤓 Are the pictures in your first reply from your library? I’m always interested in how elementary school librarians reorganize their nonfiction.

I thought about keeping the baskets and changing the call numbers, but because of the shelves’ width, they can only hold two baskets which isn’t enough to hold the collection.

I think the missing piece was not changing call numbers to either whole word topics (like Metis classification) or changing DDC call numbers to make a basket have a small, set range (like a food basket with only 641.5) that could sit where it should go if it were spine out.

It looks good, but isn’t functional. I was recently moved to this school, and I was excited to see that someone had tried to make it more browsable. It’s just that some books in baskets and some books spine out is VERY confusing. I can’t find anything. Kids can’t find anything.