I am a lover and collector of books. I still have some treasured books from my childhood that I refuse to part with. When I was getting my Master’s in School Librarianship at Longwood University, I shuddered when I discovered… Read More ›
weeding
Weeding without Controversy: Part Two – The Process
Mapping your library A starting point to organize and begin a massive weeding project is to get a feel for the physical space. Some may want to use a computer to draw out the shelving to scale to understand how… Read More ›
Weeding without Controversy: Part One – Why Weed?
The Librarian Who Hates Books Earlier this year my daughter came home from school to tell me about a controversy at her school. The school librarians weeded the collection, and some students became so offended that they took to social… Read More ›
Best Practices in Curation
The Key Commitment of school librarians within the AASL Shared Foundation of Curate is defined in the AASL Standards as “making meaning for oneself and others by collecting, organizing, and sharing resources of personal relevance” (AASL, 2018, p. 94). I… Read More ›
To Weed or Not to Weed?
I’m sure that every librarian at some point has questioned whether to weed a particular book, but what about an entire section? Just a couple of weeks ago I became the librarian at a school that was opened in 1979;… Read More ›
How are school libraries like an ice cream shop?
Think about the last time you walked into an ice cream shop. You may have seen customers browse through the dozens of flavors, looking for what will satisfy them that day. Maybe some opted for two scoops of opposing flavors,… Read More ›
Inspire students with nonfiction!
After a recent weeding bonanza where we tossed late 80s and early 90s versions of teen self-help and how-to guides, we decided to reinvest in those areas and create a Get Inspired subcollection featuring a wider variety of topics our… Read More ›
Keeping the Classics
While I watched the new delightful PBS series Anne of Green Gables, I thought of how so many children’s classics have survived. Anne was first published in 1908 and at last count has been made into six movies, six radio dramas,… Read More ›
How to Weed by the Numbers and Clean Up Your Collection
I love weeding. A well-curated library collection makes me happy. But weeding can be difficult. We attach a lot of emotion to books. Others don’t understand why anyone would ever want to get rid of books. We have to hide… Read More ›
We won the grant–yay!…now what?
So many of us have been hearing the same litany of woes in the school library world that we are mostly numb and deaf to it at this point: there is no money, people think libraries are dinosaurs, everything is… Read More ›