Like a lot of people, I start my day by scrolling on social media, catching up on the news. So when I saw that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)’s Reading Report Card results came out, my hope was that the scores would show positive growth. Unfortunately, they did not. Only 31% of fourth graders performed at or above a proficient level of achievement. Even worse, 12th graders had their worst scores since 1992, as reported by the Associated Press.
Tag: circulation
Share Out: Circulation Challenge
In the last year, I have been purposefully building up the children’s programs to best accommodate the community and to increase the offerings of quality programs. The best thing I did for this was to hire an amazing children’s librarian. Our programs are popular, our numbers for programs are great, the caregivers and kids are really enjoying everything. The only thing I keep noticing is that we are not circulating a lot of books after programs.
Operation: Get the Books Out
How are your Circulation numbers doing? Are your books leaving your library? Simi Valley Pubic Library set up a circulation goal of 21,500 item checkouts for December 2017, just slightly higher than our numbers for December 2016. Interestingly, our December checkouts tend to be less than November, even when important Holidays fall in December. Thus, when it comes to “Operation: Gets the Books Out” we must be intentional, we want to be motivated, and we want to go the extra mile. Use your shelf space as much as you can It will be easier for library users to grab books that are readily available. Caregivers with small children will appreciate your shelf displays, since there is not much time to make a book search. Use table displays located at strategic locations Book displays can have a variety of related subjects. For example, you can display Holiday picture books together with…