How did a bunch of long-time children's department librarians decide to re-organize the whole place, get buy-in from the rest of the staff plus the administration, AND keep the excitement of it all going through a year of hard work and hassles?

When you've been in the same space for 16 years, it's easy to think "surely the people who built this place in 1999 knew the perfect layout for a children's department!"

But when we took a closer look, we could see some room for improvement.

We have one building that serves more than 80,000 people. One Mobile Library.

It's a big children's department with lots of collections that can potentially confuse patrons.

We also have a pet gecko. Not really relevant, but super cute.

A department of this size, with lots of materials in different collections, is going to have some challenges. Access is key - helping patrons get exactly what they are looking for, without unnecessary obstacles.

I'll just touch on the 7 big challenges we have identified that hinder patron access.

One obstacle:

Fairy tales and nursery rhymes--so important to childhood--go unnoticed because they're way far away from our picture book collection and the children's play area. We know that patrons want them, because when we move them out to display them in the highly-trafficked areas, they go like hotcakes.

2. We didn't ALWAYS hate our spinners--they hold a ton of books in a small space, but as our collection grew, they became less of a "pro" and more "con."

1. The books were often hard to find (e.g., all books w/ "S" authors piled onto 3 spinners, in no order).

2. Many titles in our collections were in both hardcover and paperback versions. "JPB" was one more place we had to look for a title.

3. The signage was small and unnoticeable. Many patrons didn't know where the "JPB" section was.

4. JPBs required additional processing: green spine stickers to indicate series books, stickers w/ letters for books alphabetized by author's name, plus frequent changing-out of series, which meant lots of shifting.

5. TS was happy to have one fewer collection to keep track of.

6. The wire racks snagged my sweaters and cut my knuckles.

WE WERE ABLE TO REUSE A FEW OF THESE IN YA. ALSO MENTION HOW HARD IT WAS FOR CIRC TO FIND ON-SHELF HOLDS

Early Literacy display area!

This "early literacy feature"--meant to appeal to toddlers and preschoolers--has lots of book display area and interactive elements.

[got to next screen]

It's right in the middle of the picture book collection, where all the little ones pass by on their way to storytime or the play area. Ideally, it's the go-to place to take parents who ask for help finding great books for their toddlers and preschoolers.

3. Sometimes the books that make it to this display really aren't meant for little kids.

4. popular JNF series not grouped together (because Dewey)

5. JNF seasonal books separate from Fiction seasonal books

6. Many patrons want to check out a title's print version along with the audiobook.

7. During busy times, materials take a long time to get from circulation to shelf.

All these carts are loaded with materials that have been checked in--so they appear in the catalog to be on the shelf, but patrons can't find them.

GOALS:

We already have a great library, and a great children's department, with lots of fun things to do. We've worked hard at improving our programs over the past few years. Now we want to improve our collections:

Increase convenience for patrons (and for pages).

Bring hidden gems in our collection out into the light.

So we wanted to tackle a few of these problems.

At our Collectors' meeting, Sept. 2015, we came up with somei deas for meeting SOME of our challenges. Just taking a step or two in the right direction, easing into doing things a little differently.

Here was the modest plan that came from that meeting. Just four things, but making these happen would require considerable work. Plenty to keep us busy for a while.

Then we hatched a really big idea. [click to next slide]

This is Gina. We worked together the evening after the meeting I just described. She wasn't at that meeting, because she's not a collector, but she's got mad spatial skillz, so I needed her help figuring out how we could shift the JR and J fiction section to make room for the their audio counterparts.

[describe how one idea led to another and caused us to re-think the organization of the whole department.]

THEN talk about meeting with Renee' the next day to tell her about the ideas.

Renee' jumped right in with just as much enthusiasm.

We had to get buy-in from key people--TS manager, circ manager, and director--before we could move ahead. Renee' met with each one individually.

We also had another collectors meeting to talk about all the improvements we wanted to make--one of our best meetings ever, generating lots of excitement for the changes.

Lisa, TS manager, told me later that they had lots of "good conversations" about this big move in their department, and they picked up on our excitement. They willingly took on all the challenges for 2 reasons:

1. our emphatic focus on improving customer service, and
2. they could see that their workflow would eventually become more efficient on account of reducing the number of collections.

show shelving inventory spreadsheet (measuring shelf space, weeding, estimating how much growth room we'd need)

Scheduling staff time for moves

Meetings with circ and tech services,

These are the kind sons of Dawn, one of our co-workers--she volunteered them to remove the slanted shelves in the J Fiction section to prepare for putting in the flat shelves next week.

By September, once we've gotten the rest of the J Fiction shelving in place, we'll move the Popular Series books to their new home right next to the Classics.

I like the message we're sending by having all the Wimpy Kid books next to books like Little Women and White Fang....

Starting next week (??), we're pulling most of the fairy tale and nursery rhyme books from J398 and recataloging them as JE Tales and JE Rhymes (OR JE Nursery?? What did we decide?). When TS is finished with processing, we'll put them with the rest of the JEs and spread out the end of the alphabet to fill in the old Bibliotherapy section.

coming soon--

board books are now in the back play area.

We hope to get another one of these cute alligator things to hold more board books, and move them both to the the early literacy area.

We don't know yet what we'll do with the shelf space here once the board books aren't there anymore, but we're excited about the possibilities!

Here's another view of the early literacy area I just mentioned--where we plan to move the board books in the alligator bins.

To make room for them, and to help consolidate our AV materials, this Book & CD bin will move.... (click)

.... next to the wooden bins with the music CDs, which are in front of the DVDs.

End with this slide?

**Maybe just talk about things that cost little or nothing?


unused space under stairway

new books--get rid of, or reduce

[Just mention those things briefly, then end with a good concluding statement?]