Libraries Are Like Snowflakes....

...no two are alike!

I've been reflecting alot on this lately. Of course, winter gets me into "the -wonder-of-snowflakes"  territory.

But really, anyone who works in libraries - for a system (county-wide, regional or state-wide); for a multi-branch system; in stand-alone libraries in neighboring municipalities dotted one after another in large urban areas or far-flung neighbors in rural counties - gets this true uniqueness of each library and branch.

We all share the core values of librarianship. We all work to improve the way we serve our communities through working through standards developed for youth work like the ALSC and YALSA competencies. We network like maniacs.

But still and all, each library and each different staffer in a continuing round of leavings and hirings; changing demographics and adaptation to opportunities bring unique talents, education, perspectives, ideas, talents and skills to the table. New wrinkles; successes from past jobs; new adaptations; realignments; tweaks and new directions based on each community and neighborhood served.

It gives me a constant frisson of delight to walk into every library - and re-visit and re-visit  - to see all the changes, innovations and amazing inventions that are an ever-evolving part of each library's landscape. It's people, it's learning, it's snowflakery!

One of my favorite return trips involve visits to libraries where I have worked - whether as a line staffer or manager. I love what gets brought to the table. New staff and managers bring  new approaches and expand services in new directions - seemingly un-thought of but all perfectly and deliciously unique and evolutionary.

Old YS Department arrangement - preschool area

Older kids area in back of room

Ranganathan's Fifth Law: The Library is a growing organism.

The preschoolers....

           

...get the protected area by far end of the room.

The other day I was delighted to see the youth area at my old stomping grounds flipped. The preschool area is nestled far from the exit in a more protected area to prevent toddler run-aways from making their escape easily outside and into the insanely busy parking lot. The older kids get first dibs at the entrance with internet computers, a whiteboard (with kids invited to name their space; my favorite was "Sweat Net") and the info book collection.

The older kids get the entrance

It is this variety in the midst of all our shared values and networking online and in person that strengthens my pride in and belief that library staffers will continue to problem solve, tweak, adapt, explore, discover and push - uniquely and with an always new eye - the envelope in each of their own situations. 

It's what makes us nimble. It's what makes us strong. It's what makes each and every one of us and each and every one of our libraries so like much like a snowflake - something to be be appreciated for its individuality and celebrated collectively.

Brews and Book Reviews

Recently, Sara, my renaissance-woman colleague at the library, wrote a thoughtful piece at the Ladies of Craft Brewing blog about the importance of reviewing craft brews responsibly. As I read it I thought, "Jeez, this could pretty much be said about book reviewing as well."  Then I saw a link of Madigan Reads where an author really let a reviewer know what she thought right back (before the author took the post down) and things clicked again for me.

Until recently, I was a long time book reviewer for School Library Journal.  I often thought about the power of my words when considering what to say about a book I had before me. Ranganathan's Five Laws always spoke to me. In particular, his second and third laws really yakked:

• Every reader his/her book
• Every book, its reader

Because I found the plot strange for my tastes (after all, isn't the Marge-centric view of the universe the way everyone should look at life?), the characters rubbed me the wrong way (maybe one reminded me of my nutjob relative or another kept me in mind of the sneering, stink-eye-giving teen that I don't much care for), the writing not elevated or bright (but would reluctant readers find it a bracing and fun read), did that give me carte blanche to trash the book or dismiss it out of hand? What reader was the book truly speaking to? It didn't have to speak to me but I needed to know who it might speak to. I thought carefully about the audience for the book, about how it might be used in a library setting or in a home, about how it might speak to a reader quite different from me.

I also thought in a larger way about the fact that many people found value in this book - the publisher, editor, promotional department - and put their considerable heft behind it. So somewhere, somehow, someone thought this book had worth. And I went about finding it.  I was honest in my opinion, not Polly-annish, but also willing to explore who best fit with this book. It was certainly analagous to the work I do daily at the library with kids finding just the right book for each individual reader.

As a "citizen-librarian" reviewer for SLJ (no pay), I have felt great kinship with the other citizen-reviewers who blog for the love of youth literature throughout the Kidlitosphere. I have learned whose opinion I trust the most to give clear-eyed insight into the books they read.  I have also learned to be leery of  those who sometimes like to talk but have little to say; and those who occasionally are pretty darn sure they could write a better book. I learned who actually speaks to the book before them and knows how to imagine the many different readers that book might have. Unlike journal reviewers who are assigned the books they review, my sister and brother bloggers can choose to review or not review a book. By their silence, a book can certainly be judged.And in that very silence, I have certainly listened and known much about books.

Our words have power, my friends, just as Sara writes about in her blog on reviews of craft beer and what they can mean.  I am wondering if we are thinking about this as we write or a sense of divine privilege and insight dictates what words we share on the life work of others?

Just wondering...

Image: 'Friday: 1.2.2008'  http://www.flickr.com/photos/7721141@N07/3164270664

Covers and Spines - Valuable Real Estate

I am always bemused (sometimes to the point of tearing out my hair, so that could take me slightly beyond bemusement) by how little regard library and automation planners and apparatchiks give to the amazing real estate we know as book covers and spines. You get a cover and a spine to sell books to kids. It freaks me out to see how much of that libraries can cover to make the book anything from asinine to undecipherable.

Two hilarious and unfortunate barcode placements highlighted recently in Awful Library Books blog here and here are perfect examples of this practice. Automation folks say the barcode MUST go here and chaos and snickers result. Of course the argument also goes that if we put the barcode on the back, we'll lose the back jacket blurb.  I don't display the book backwards, though, so I harumphingly say, let the cover shine.

Full authors names on the spine are another bete noire of mine.  I have heard it blatted about that it helps shelvers by giving them the info they need to shelve correctly. I'll agree (although our college-aged shelvers seem to have no trouble dealing with three letters or less in shelving exactly alphabetically...could have something to do with their excellent predictive skills or more like, their ability to read the author's full name higher up on the spine where the publisher placed it so we could see the author's moniker) somewhat. But really,  kids looking at spine-out books get to see "The Secret"  or "A Series" or "My Friend" without seeing the whole title.  How do they choose?  My favorite spine label cover-up is for a multi-volume fiction series that displays the word "The" for each book - and no, it doesn't include the series volume on the spine label, so every book needs to be pulled out to find the desired title. How very un-fourth law of Ranganathan!

And save yourselves now and don't let me get started on endless dewey numbers in juvenile non-fiction collections.  Come on!  Except for mega - and I mean freakin' - big collections at large urban libraries, why are we extending dewey numbers beyond one decimal for kids?  They come in and want a dinosaur or lion or bug or horse or dog or truck book - and for 98% of the kids it's ANY book on this subject. They don't particularly want a certain NF author just a book on their passion. And they just want to find a book now. Long deweys mean they have to come to us (ah, it's a job security issue, not a cataloging one?) to unlock the mystery of the impossible long number. 

Libraries using a BISAC model or truncating Dewey and replacing the cutter line with a clearer indication of the subject (636.1 HORSE; 796 FOOTBALL or F; 599.7 LION or L) are my BFFs and heroes. And libraries honoring preschoolers by busting out big subject areas in the picture books into more friendly subjects that tots crave (princesses, concepts, "big teeth" dinosaurs, sharks and felines", transportation, celebrations, fairytales) have my undying gratitude and respect.

I say let the book covers and spines shine out.  Let kids find books easily by wise decisions in cataloging, processing and automation issues. Let those books be free!


Image: 'Finally got to make something with this+awesome+vintage+fabric' http://www.flickr.com/photos/63103685@N00/3023635136

Dewey...or Don't We?

I have been pretty excited to see libraries talking about and looking into adapting BISAC to use with non-fiction classification.  My buddy Ken Hall over at Fond du Lac Public Library is putting this into play at his library (and has a nice explanation here).  What calls to me about this system is that it still maintains subject organization but also invites the art of browsing to sing out as well.

Many, many years ago, at my former job, my visionary director Jack Fry and I concocted a heretical new  Dewey/Cuttering system that vastly simplified our kids NF collection and was easy to use. Although not quite as simple as the bookstore's BISAC, it incorporated the concept that kids are not necessarily looking for a specific book by a specific author in a subject section but rather books in general about the subject they are interested in.

I had watched for years as kids, parents and A+ student shelvers struggled to find and get the books they were looking for.  And as a borderline dyslexic, I had my own nightmares with transposed numbers in the great forest of Dewey's decimals.

So we tried to use no decimals at all or at very most, when push came to shove, one number beyond the decimal.  Rather than using the cutter to designate the author's last name, in sections where the decimals had been decimated (bwa-ha-ha-ha), we used a generic letter to separate types of books in a subject.  That reads like Greek to me so let me give a couple of examples.

Baseball's Dewey Decimal (DD) number is 796.357; football is 796.332; basketball is 796.323. So we designated sports books as 796.3 and put all baseball books as 796.3 B (B=baseball); football books as 796.3 F (F=football); all basketball books as 796.3 C (C= "court" sports); soccer as 796.3 S, etc. We chose not to include an author's name in the spine label, just subject of the book. These collections were totally browse-worthy.

Same in mammal books in the notorious 599.7, 599.6, 599.3 sections. Bears would be 599.7 B, big cats 599.7 F (feline), and onward.  We kept the same basic Dewey number but just gathered all books on bears into one designated number/letter and let the kids browse. We chose this formula in any section of the collection that had great long Dewey strings (crafts and animals spring to mind...we were never ever brave enough to tackle 398's. I'm afraid..they defeated me). We didn't assign the collection letter willy-nilly - we chose letters that matched the DD designation.  We just truncated it and translated it to be user-friendly.

Kids loved it, parents loved it, shelvers worshipped at our feet.  I always hoped this would catch on somewhere but catalogers were universally horrified and condemnatory and they control how we present stuff to our public (unless you were lucky like me to have a visionary director who said go for it and control of the cataloging...yes, I was cataloger AND children's librarian!). I always thought it was a shame.  It made me think about whether we listen hard enough in libraries to the folks who work with kids and know gobs more than people think we do (but that's another whole 800 posts worth!)

As to whether kids can handle more complex DD numbering in later years if not exposed or taught DD early? I have a hunch they can. Someone did a study years ago saying that the average reading level of a catalog was 6th grade and I figure decimals as an everyday skill is out there in upper elementary grades as it is..a time when kids are aging out into the wild blue yonder of the adult collection for their research. It's a bit like not teaching geometry until our minds can handle that level of mathematical visualization. It's not for most 4th graders.

It has always struck me as trez bizarre that while we want to organize the info for ease of use, we continue to make it very difficult for the average Joe and Jill to find the darn stuff. I am thrillingly happy that brave souls in libraries are finally seeing BISAC as the way to a future that honors organization but does it in a language that the general public is familiar with (although I must admit I do love making the analogy with kids on class visits that Dewey is just MY world language rather than Spanish or Japanese or German!).

I am all for making libraries easy to use so that we can follow one of my most favorite of Ranganathan's Rules: "Save the time of the reader"!

Image: '09-may-20'  http://www.flickr.com/photos/91255327@N00/3565110921