Where are the books?
May 26th, 2009 by Cathy Jo Nelson
It’s that time of year again–time to do inventory, track down late books, and weed the old books. I have a theory on weeding:
If a principal walks through the library and sees full to brimming shelves, they can rationalize no funding for new books. If a principal sees empty shelves in a library, they leave thinking OMG we need to make sure there is funding for new books.
I wish I could say this works all the time, but it does indeed make a statement. Principals, teachers, parents, and students will walk through and bemoan the lack of books. The visual reminder is just a nice way to keep in the principal’s thoughts that some of that annual budget should be allocated to the library, especially when we in SC work in for the most part site-based management that determines funding and such. Oh, this picture here is actually one of my weeds from last year. Notice how full the shelves are behind it. I can say now that not one single shelf in the library is even remotely full like that anymore. During the school year, I use the empty space to display books. But around May 1st, all the books are shelved, exposing (gasp!!) empty shelves. It’s amazing how many walk through and make the comment “Wow we need some new books.” It’s an evil ploy, but hopefully it will work.
Now to get the books still checked out turned in before school is said and done this year. My list is still too many pages long to share a number. Ouch. Speaking of getting books returned, did you see this creative plea for returning books and “clearing thy name”? (Special thanks to Joyce Valenza at the NeverEnding Search SLJ Blog.)
Find more videos like this on springfieldvideo
Image: ‘Nice incentive‘
www.flickr.com/photos/73798453@N00/3009059684
I hope your “empty” shelves trick works. I massively weeded my collection this year, too! Unfortunately, if I got rid of all of the books I should have, the shelves would be 95% empty! As for getting books back, we all face that problem. With a student body of only 335 students, I have over 200 books still out! Yikes! I usually offer a “free chocolate for free accounts” promotion, but time slipped up on me and I didn’t offer it this year. I’m just relying on teacher assistance and a steep fine policy – $5 fine for any book returned after school is out – as well as hold slips that show student have a “lost” book they must pay for. Nothing like shocking parents who come to pick up report cards and see their student owes $36.80 for two lost library books!
If ONLY I could hold a report card for books owed…at least until registration in the fall. Sigh.
Technically, I don’t think they “hold” the report card. They just wont mail out the report cards for students who have hold slips. Parents have to physically come in and pick them up.
We are running a pizza party for the first class to get all their books in before a certain date – including teacher and class loans. The hype begins this week.
I never thought of the weeding for the purpose of making the shelves look less full. Our funding comes from the state, and it’s pretty good, so I don’t have to fight for a decent book budget. I do think shelves with room to grow actually make the library look cleaner or more organized than one with full shelves. Perhaps I should look at buying more shelving to help spread things out, that’s one of my problems in one section of my library.
As far as the number of books out, there were 200 on Monday, but by Friday, only 42. We’re making progress.