Books Ahoy, Week 2

This year the Books Ahoy Mobile Library Cart is travelling to every English class over the course of two days. (Up to seven classes on Thursday and up to seven on Friday each block.) This is really helping get my FitBit steps on those two days!

It's a bit of a long haul out to the last two classes each block on Fridays since they are in the very first ( which means FARTHEST away) cabana (a.k.a. mobile classroom). Sidewalks would help, but the cart is managing to survive the bumpy boardwalk. It's easier with two people. However, sometimes I will be by myself when seniors are busy with meetings, senior trips, etc. (Building muscles!)

My question becomes the organization on the cart. All books on the cart are labeled with the new genre label. Should I separate and cluster each genre together, or should I just keep them randomized on the cart? I am trying to determine which would increase circulation and student interest the most.

Although some classes are a bit of a hard sell on checking out a book to read, circulation numbers are increasing. I am looking forward to that trend continuing through both the cart and when the fiction section is genrefied.

On another note, Mr. Wall, the Tech facilitator with whom I share an office, is on the senior trip today. That leaves me to "put out technology fires" in what I sincerely hope is a figurative sense...like the invasion of minions last year, technology fires seem to ignite when Mr. Wall is away....By 7:30 this morning, the fires appeared somewhat manageable as you can see by the fire extinguisher I attempted to use. Hopefully that continues all day.

Let the Genrefication Games Begin

Now that our labels are here, the first task has begun!

Our first task at moving the fiction section into genres is to place transparent colored labels on the existing spine label. The colors correspond to different genres.

Our color codes will be:
Green: Historical Fiction
Orange: Action/Adventure
Purple: Mystery/Suspense
Red: Horror/Thriller
White: Sports Fiction
Aqua: Paranormal
Blue: Realistic Fiction
Fluorescent Pink: Romance
Fluorescent Yellow: Fantasy
Gray: Dystopian
Burgundy: Science Fiction

Students are using the existing catalog to look for the genre. Some MARC records, however, don't list it. Our backup plan had been GoodReads...Naturally, we discovered that GoodReads will not load correctly on a chromebook. Not a big problem, but making a few books a little more difficult to label.

My library assistants are currently working on A-Dec...the center library shelves. When those are done, we'll begin on the tall shelves at the back of the library. This step will take a little while!

Breakout

In June I decided to revamp some of the ways my Library Science classes will cover different subjects. One of my new strategies became using a breakout box.

(For those that are unfamiliar with breakouts, you have a box with multiple locks of varying types  keeping it closed. Students are given a "story" and tasks/clues to lead to the combination of the locks. These tasks/clues should be instructional, academic, skill-based, and/or review in nature.)

Now when I went to the week-long DENSI conference, I attended a session on how to create your own breakout. One of the suggestions was to have a clue lead to another clue and then to the combination of a lock.

Well.....

Although I felt the 13 tasks were fairly straight-forward, there was one important thing I forgot to anticipate and take into account:

MY STUDENTS ALL TEND TO OVER-ANALYZE EVERYTHING.

That's right, they made it more difficult than it really was! For example, one clue said to "skip over just a bit and see what your rights are." The book the clue was found in was in the 347's of the Dewey Decimal System. Five books away on the same shelf is a book titled, What Are My Right?. The students were looking at shelves above, below, and two/three shelves away because "Due Process," court cases, and the judicial system all "deal with my rights."

Finally, I had to give them hints. "It's on the same shelf." Well, that led to them looking at almost every book EXCEPT the correct one. "Whose rights?" (answer: my rights. "Yes, now remember that.") Still, no luck. Finally, I just chuckled and told them they would all be smacking their own foreheads when they saw what the correct answer was....and they all did.

We haven't gotten through the entire box's clue. One class did get one extra lock opened compared to the other classes so I am giving them 30 minutes today to move forward. Hopefully they will have learned that I am not making this into rocket science...

To Weed or Not to Weed

This is a very important question! We have some obvious choices: books that, although brand new in appearance, are actually quite old. These books were part of the "school start-up package" and would not have been individually selected. (Louis L'Amour anyone?) However, that's where the easy part ends.

The reason for switching fiction to genrefied is simple: connect students with the books they want to read! If a student enjoys mysteries, having all the mysteries together allows the student to find new authors in the genre of choice. We have so many great books that are somewhat "lost" because a student who would enjoy it might not look at that particular shelf when browsing.

So the question becomes" "Would this book be enjoyed once in a genre location?" This was easy to answer for some non-circulating books, but not so easy for others. Why not leave the books and see? Well, moving to a genre organized collection is a lot of work. The more books, the more work you have to do. Each book is labeled by genre, then genres are separated to new shelves. Finally, each book must have a sublocation created in the library program to help students find them from the online catalog and to aid in inventory at the end of the year. This means weeding the collection in advance is a time-saver in the long run.