A few times a year, one of our dedicated shelvers will come to me with a plea: “There’s no more room in Kids IRead!”
Disney-Hyperion
Kids IRead (Independent Reader) is our section of early chapter books and series fiction, such as those delightful Rainbow Magic Fairies. It’s one of our highest-circulating collections, but circulation and popularity ebb and flow. There will be weeks when we have no Geronimo Stilton books on the shelf and weeks when every duplicate copy of the entire series will be checked in. Some months it seems like every 2nd grade girl in Darien is reading about (Girls Name) the (Activity, Animal, Color, etc) Fairy and then there are months where two shelves of Rainbow Magic sit untouched and unread. Projected snow days again later this week have IRead currently looking like a ghost town – most of the shelves are half-empty. With a collection of such high-circulating and high-volume titles and limited shelf space, how do you make decisions on which series to keep?
We have scheduled weeds of Kids IRead twice a year, plus unscheduled mini-weeds whenever we’re running low on space, and each time it’s a battle: should we pull that series which was incredibly popular 1 or 2 years ago or should we see if it rebounds in popularity? Do we need three copies of every Geronimo book or can we survive with one or two? We really want to add that awesome new series – but do we have the room? We pull lists of circulation, we talk to patrons when we see them browsing in IRead, and we confer amongst ourselves: Do you recommend this series?
Is there a collection other than series fiction which causes such debate during weeding? IRead is a unique combination: high circulation, high volume, and an incredibly important group of readers who are just beginning to flex their independent reading wings. No librarian wants to remove from the shelves the series of books that has inspired a child to read independently. On the other hand, no librarian wants to keep an awesome new series out of the collection which might inspire new readers because there’s limited shelf space.
How do you handle series fiction in your library? Do you have circulation criteria series fiction must meet to remain in the library? What do you do when you hear the dread words, “There’s no room” ?
Julie
One thing we have done with the series paperbacks is to shelve them in plastic shoe boxes. The boxes fit neatly on the shelves with the short end facing front which is labeled with the series name. It is amazing how many paperbacks will fit in one of those bins and the bin takes up the same amount of space no matter if there is 1 book checked in 30 so we don’t need to worry about shifting when a slew of Rainbow Magic or Geronimo Stilton come flooding in. The kids know if a bin is empty the series is all checked out. Shelving is also much easier this way, at least a couple of times a day someone will take the box we use to collect returns and go shelve them in just minutes without having to stop and shift. When an whole pile of a very popular series is returned we can have them back on the shelf in seconds.
Lisa
Interesting idea!
Elisabeth Gattullo Marrocolla
That’s a great idea! Do you think it’s possible to do a combination of traditional shelving and bin shelving?
Vicki Kouchnerkavich
It does get down to space issues. I just weeded about a dozen Rainbow Fairies within the last month since we were running out of space. After a check of stats, the 12 were not earning their heating and cooling, so withdrawn they were and onto book sale shelf. I do think the clear plastic shoe boxes as bins for series within what we call the “Chapter” book section would free up space. Might have to check this out. Thanks for the idea.