Provocative and practical - ECIS librarians pre conference workshop

First day of the ECIS triennial Librarians' conference at St John's School Waterloo, Belgium. I attended the day long workshop presented by Kevin Hennah, a retail consultant to school and public libraries.

We spent the whole day sitting and listening to him present. There was some discussion but he showed us more than 600 slides and spoke for more than 5 hours. If I get nothing else from this conference (and I know I will) it would have been worthwhile coming for this day alone.

He was provocative. Many times I felt myself squirming in reaction to one of his statements because I realised that my library was not as effective as it could be.

"Librarians are forward thinking. They are early adopters of new things. They do, however, hang on to the old as well."

So I need to adopt the new and discard the old. This applies to books as much as it does to technology. Kevin went on later to say that we should buy a book and get rid of an old book, one in and one out. 

Some of Kevin's ideas about shelving and painting and furnishings will cost money. Something that costs next to nothing is to weed the entire collection ruthlessly and make space for face out displays. Face out displays allow the customers to see the books. Print will sell itself with great covers if the students and staff can see them.  Watch this space for some before and after photos.

Kevin challenged us to think of three big messages we would give our principals when we return home. I am fortunate to have a principal who would have been agreeing with everything Kevin had to say - the three things I know that will make her eyes light up....

1. I want an amazing sign outside our library doors that say "Library" - clean letters, great colour.

2. I want to develop a library brand and learn how to use it effectively across both campuses.

3. I will be asking for some library furniture this budget round - ottomans (very appropriate for Istanbul)  easy chairs and slat boards and perspex for face out displays.

I am very fortunate because I work for a Head of School who has great passion for and understanding of interior design. I understand about the merchandise and together we can work on the visual merchandising of our books. 

I can't wait to get back to school to try out these ideas....

I am tweeting from conference #ECISlib2014 see you tomorrow with the next conference blog post.

Weeding

Last week I posted this photo on Facebook. We have many thistles around our school at the moment and I love their dramatic purple/pink colours. One of my friends commented that these are actually deadly to cows. I am pretty sure she was not suggesting I was a cow, she was simply sharing the information. At the moment I am learning about collection management including how to select books and resources for our collection and of course deselect them - also known as weeding. I realized how conservative I have been in weeding the collection. I think I have been fearful since we are such a distance from sources of books and customs makes it tricky to import them. However, old, musty, dated books are as toxic to our library as purple thistles are to cows. 

As I was reading about weeding (now that is fun to say) I found Doug Johnson's article about it and his comment, "Poorly weeded collections are not the sign of poor budgets but of poor librarianship. Period." 

Ouch. That was like coming up against a thistle. But, like so many things, Johnson is right. I have to overcome my fears and get into the collection and get rid of all the weeds. If I don't my students will not find the great new books we have.

There are many great guides to how to weed. CREW is a guide from Texas and is downloadable. Then there is the guide from National Library of New Zealand services to schools. Most advice to write a clear collection management policy and set the selection and deselection criteria very clearly. The trouble with weeding is that some people in our schools do not want to part with books. Somehow it can be a very controversial thing to remove books from the library collection. The blog "Awful library books" actually shows the terrible books that librarians are removing form their collections. It also gives some great reasons why we need to weed. In the section "Why weed?" they make the valid point that libraries have limited space. The SCIS electronic newsletter 'connections' article about weeding makes the valid point that students actually need materials available ina way that they can easily be found, not crammed together, old and new together.

So yesterday, in the effort to make space at our smallest campus I spent the day weeding the picture books. As I did many children came up to ask what I was doing (as I sat amid piles of old dusty and worn out books). Anna in our Prep class (age 5 years old) sat down beside me and asked if she could help. I told her my criteria for deselecting the books and I handed her an old musty book and asked her what should I do with this? She looked through the book carefully while telling me' "I haven't seen anyone look at this book". After looking at the date due slip, noting the browned pages and ripped spine she said no we shouldn't re-shelf this book, put it on the pile. Together we worked through about 20 books. Some of the nice looking books we stopped and considered the copyright date (information she grasped quickly and consulted on a few other books). Unfortunately for me Anna had to go to another class and I was left on my own to ransack the picture books. 

That day 580 books were removed from our collection. Don't despair I reordered the tattered favourites and classics. The shelves now show the beautiful new books we have. Children came in and loved browsing the shelves. I have grown stronger in my professionalism as a librarian and yes, though I like the purple thistles they really can be toxic to students use of the collection. I will return and finish the job on the whole collection.

The cramped shelves.

Weeded shelves

The list confirming 580 books were removed. and the box full of old books

References

Beilharz, R. (2006). Secret library business – part 2. Connections, 63. Retrieved from http://www2.curriculum.edu.au/scis/connections/issue_63/secret_library_business__part_2.html

Johnson, D. (2003, September). Weed. Retrieved May 17, 2014, from Doug Johnson website: http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/weed.html

Kelly, M., & Hibner, H. (2013). Why we weed. Retrieved May 17, 2014, from Awful Library Books website: http://awfullibrarybooks.net/why-weed/

Larsen, J. (Ed.). (2008). CREW resources and links. Retrieved May 17, 2014, from Texas State Library and Archives Commission website: https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ld/pubs/crew/index.html

Services to schools weeding guide. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2014, from National Library of New Zealand website: http://schools.natlib.govt.nz/school-libraries/building-and-managing-collection/weeding-guide

Weeding and weaving

We try to have a planned approach to weeding. We take a different area each month to weed but as with some house keeping tasks other things take priority. I recently weeded the entire fiction collection - adult, young adult and PYP. My criteria - condition of the book, how old it is, how often is has been borrowed and whether it serves a greater purpose staying on the shelf (if we have no other fiction set in Kenya for example)  I also order many replacements as we go.

What to do with all the old books? This year our secondary school had a field day in the last week. Each Community and Service group had to come up with a game. Our student librarians came up with this game - balancing a book on your head while navigating a trail. It was surprising popular and a welcome change of pace from the other more rowdy and race type of games.