Day 4 is upon us and late last night I got an email from my principal saying it was OK to keep the library closed next week. That made me feel a lot better about the process and not so overwhelmed. 

Today was all about finishing figuring out where all the books go. Thanks to some great parent volunteers, an ex student who came back before school started (CHS had a delayed opening) and my amazing aide Michelle we were able to finish the process by around 11:00 am. 

It was so odd to see the entire fiction area with no books. 

Next up was putting the books back on the shelves. After some thinking and consulting some of my students, I decided to go with the idea of similar topics going next to one another. So Realistic Fiction is next YA and then Romance will come next. I then needed to figure out which section to put first, after to put first and after careful consultation with my top reader in the school it was decided that Realistic Fiction should be the first area in the fiction section. 

Next, we needed to put all the Realistic Fictions books in alphabetical order by authors last name and put them back onto the shelves. But before we did this, we needed to make sure to change the location in the OPAC. Thanks to Destiny we were able to do a Batch Update so I decided to change the Prefixes to show where they are now located. This way all the Realistic Fictions say FIC(Realistic) and then the first three letters of the authors last name. Being able to just scan the book put it on the shelves and then hit batch update made things so much easier! 

Today we got all of the Realistic Fiction area on the shelves and part of the YA area. We still have a long way to go but I see the end in sight. I am exhausted and really did not take into account the fact that I now need to go trick or treating with my son. Ugh! At least I can steal some of his candy!!

Tomorrow will be all about scanning the books and putting them back on the shelves! I can't wait to see how much we get done tomorrow!

After a long day of scanning book and figuring out what genre they go into I realized that I don't think I am going to get this done in a week. I just sent the following email to my supervisor and principal asking for more time (my wave the white flag moment):

Hi,
It has been an amazingly busy week in the library and we have gotten so much accomplished but we still have a lot more to go. For a detailed account on what we have done check out my blog  where I have been posting daily updates on the progress. http://www.elissamalespina.com/thoughts-on-technology---blog.html

I do think I may have been a little to optimistic about being done with the project in a week. I don't have anyone scheduled for the library next Monday and Wednesday because it is a short week, can I please stay closed those two days? I  think having that extra time will allow the entire project to get done correctly. If I finished earlier then I promise I will open it up sooner. 

I am sorry I did not do a better job with the estimate. 

Let me know your thoughts on this request. 

Hopefully they will allow me to keep the library closed next week to get this project done. If they do may actually get to see my family this weekend instead of the fiction area that I have come to know and love so much over the past few weeks :-)

Today we got all but one set of book shelves cleared out and put stickers on all of those books. We have one more set of bookshelves left to clear out along with the New Book Display and then we should be ready to start scanning and putting books back. 

I got into a really interesting discussion with a parent volunteer today who suggested that I maybe mix up where I put the books to make it more of the retail model of placement. For example, instead of putting the science fiction next to the fantasy - because they sort of blend together- I put them maybe across from one another or in different locations so it forces the children to look at other books. What are your thoughts? 

My original thinking was  to group the books that following way:

• Science fiction would be next to Fantasy
• YA would be next to Realistic fiction and Romance
• Sports would be next to Action Adventure and Mystery/Triller
• Historical fiction would be by classics. I

I think I like my way of doing it but I can be convinced either way. 

Tomorrow is all about finishing putting books in the correct place and starting to put books back on the shelves....

Once again I need to thank my amazing parent volunteers and my aide Michelle. Without them I could not do this. 

Day 2 was all about figuring out what books go in what genre. After pulling the action/adventure books and the rest of the mystery books it was time to figure out where all the books that did not make one of the resource lists go. 

The best way that I could figure out how to do this was to scan the books and look at the title details in Destiny. It is very hard to figure out exactly where books go and since it is now up to me to make the decision I am constantly wondering if I picked the correct genre. It is so subjective!

After we decided what book went with each group we put the genre stickers on them. My parent volunteers were amazing! I had at least one volunteer at all time today. It was so helpful! They were so helpful with the stickering! I also have to thank my aide Ms. Mitchell who worked with me all day on the project. 


My students rule! I had two that stayed with me till 4:00 helping me put stickers on book and deciding what genre the books went into. They are the best! I just love them!!

I do have to admit that I am feeling overwhelmed. I stayed till 6:00 tonight and still feel like I have so much left to do. I am not sure it is all going to get done before Monday. A week might not have been enough time... What did I get myself into? I know it will look good and be better for my students in the end but right now in the middle of it I am a little worried I may have taken too much on. 

Maybe it is because I am so tired and achy..Hopefully tomorrow I will get a lot accomplished and feel a little more secure about everything.


Tomorrow should be about finishing up figuring out what the undecided books are hopefully starting to change in the OPAC the call #s and and putting the books back on the shelf. 

Day One was all about pulling books and putting genre stickers on books. Using the Destiny resource list Barbara, Michelle and I pulled the books and started placing them on any available space in the Library. We are starting with the top of bookcases.  

I made an effort to go into the 800s and include as many short story collection books into the new areas as possible. These books almost never get read because of where they are located and thought that they would get a new lease on life in this new area. Hopefully students will now realize just how great some of our short story books are. 

While we were pulling the books my amazing parent volunteers were hard at work putting genre stickers on the books. Thanks to their help we got so many books stickered! 

I never imagined that we would be so far along after day one! But we do have a lot more to go. 

Next up:

• Pulling the remaining mystery/thriller books and the action adventure books
• Figuring out which books should be realistic fiction and YA
  
• Figuring out where the remaining books on the shelves go
• Using the Batch Change Feature in Destiny to help us to be able to locate where each book is
• Putting all the books back on the shelves

I can do this in four days right????

A few weeks ago I was honored to be invited to the School Library Journals Leadership Summit. It was an amazing weekend of learning and talking to some of the leaders in the school library field. While there I starting talking with some of the librarians about moving my fiction area away for being organized by last name and making it organized by genre. I had been thinking about doing this for awhile and after listening to these amazing group of librarians talk about how it made their library more user friendly and how circulation went up, I decided to make the move. 

After a talk with my supervisor and my principal, I started making my plan. I quickly realized that the only way to do this correctly was to close down the library and devote all my efforts to this. After looking at my schedule I realized that I had a week which I could make this happen. I also needed as many parent volunteers as I could get. Thanks to the HSA I was able to put out a email blast to parents.  

Next, I researched what other librarians had done and made a live-binder filled with resources . You can click here to view it. From that research I decided on my genre categories. 

• Classics
• Action/Adventure
• Mystery/Suspense
• Realistic Fiction
• YA
• Historical Fiction
• Sports
• Fantasy
• Science Fiction
• Romance
  

Then it was off too ordering the stickers, signs and book ends. I got the stickers and some of the signs and the book ends from Demco. Please note it was not cheap. It cost over $1000 for just the stickers and signs and bookends. But thanks to money from the HSA I was able to get what I needed.

I also needed good signs to mark each area and was looking for something fun to do. When doing research on moving to genre based fictions areas, I found a great article from my friend and mentor Tiffany Whitehead. In the article she not only talked about the move she made ,but also shared the poster she had created. I loved them and asked her I could use them. Being the kind person she is she sent me the jpgs and also told me how to make my own ones using the app WordFoto. Best $.99 I ever spent!  

Using a local printer, I was able to get the posters printed and made with easel backs because I am going to have to put the signs on top of the built in bookcases I have. Those were surprisingly inexpensive only costing $7.50 each. They look amazing!!

Next, it was time for the big weed! In the span of two and half days with the help of my students teacher Barbara and my library aide Michelle we weeded over 500 books from our fiction collection! Some that had not been taking out since before I was born!  

Then it was time to make the resource lists! Thank God for Destiny! With a quick search I was able to get a list of books by the same genre. I then was able to put them into resources lists which I was able to print out and use to pull books. 

See Day 1 for more information on how the first day of the project went.