Nesting, like a hamster

I've been a very busy little hamster in the library, moving things around, finding homes for things, getting rid of stuff the library no longer needs.  I wish I had taken better before photos but it didn't occur to me.  I just started straightening shelves and it turned into a major re-org of the non-fiction section.

This is a picture of the Biography section after I weeded and straightened it.  There were a lot of 920's over here as well so I moved them back to their Dewey neighborhood in non-fiction. That's why you see a few empty shelves here.

 Before I straightened this area it looked a little bit like this:

This is the Spanish language section.  Unlike the biographies, the books in the Spanish section do not have proper spine labels.  Fiction, non-fiction, and picture books alike all have just the first letter of the author's last name on a bright orange spine label.

Anyway, back to non-fiction.  I wish I'd taken pictures but oh well.  Most of the shelves were only half full so the books would slide and flop over a lot and they looked very messy.  I did some weeding and then shifted all the books forward and filled in the gaps on the shelves and I opened up enough shelf space to move the biographies to the last row of shelves in nonfiction which leaves me with this:

Wow!  Look at all that open space!  My next plan of attack is the Spanish section which is not pictured here but is just to the left of what you see here.  I'm going to put proper spine labels on all these books and then create a Spanish fiction section, and a Spanish non-fiction section.  This will still leave me room to create an 'emergent reader' section and a picture book section on this wall.  Moving those books over here will give me more space to integrate the 'easy fiction' back into regular fiction.  This way, we don't have any 'easy' reader sections.  All books are for everyone.

Speaking of fiction, here's a couple of pictures to show a little bit of before and after:

Before - all the books that belong to a series (nearly everything in kids and YA lit) were sitting on top of super full book shelves.  Also, the graphic novels were right next to the librarians desk so they could be watched.  I put them back on the 741.5 shelf.  Then I did some weeding.  There were (and still are) some really outdated titles on these shelves.

After - the tops of the shelves are clear!  Getting rid of titles that don't circulate made plenty of room for titles that do. (I still haven't got Harry Potter or Rick Riordan's books on the shelves yet, but I'm working on it!)

It's really gratifying to see all of this progress.

While this was going on at school, I picked up a book to read at home so I can catch up with middle school lit.  I finished it last week, it's called Leviathan, by Scott Westerfield.  This book really caught my attention and it's now one of my new favorites.  It's an alternate history of World War I and it follows two characters, a boy whose parents are murdered, and a girl who disguises herself as a boy so she can join the air force.  They are on opposite sides of the war but end up helping each other.  The really interesting part of the story is the technology.  The two warring factions are referred to as either Darwinists or Clankers.  The Darwinists use genetic modification to 'fabricate' new species of animals which are then used as war machines.  The Clankers use steampunk style mechanical machines.  Their tanks move on legs rather than treads.  The only thing I don't like about this book is that it is the first in a series but can't be read as a stand alone book.  If you want to know the whole story, you have to read the rest of the books.  So I'm on book 2 now.  Just like in book 1, it starts off with action and doesn't really let up.  Very exciting!

One last thing, I haven't given a knitting update in a while, never since I started at CMS.  I made this set of Dr. Seuss inspired beanies for my friends who had twins last October.

Have a good week and keep reading!