Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Thousands of books!

Yes, it's school library time here again, even though I'm a volunteer librarian and even though it's summer. Weeding the collection is a big summer task for me but there's a sense of urgency: that which I can weed doesn't need to be packed up, as we're taking our wonderfully created elementary school library on the road to a new location. Ugh. And yay.

But here's my problem... I've started in the picture books, taking out multiples (either for classrooms or other schools). That's easy. But then there's just soooooo many books I still haven't read that I flip past looking for multiples. That's hard. I swear I'm the slowest weeder around, as I sit on the floor in an incredibly hot room and read book after book after book. I oooooh at art. I laugh at puns. I cringe at bad rhyme and nod at great imagery. Sometimes I find titles that, serviceable as they might be, we simply aren't going to have room for on our new shelves (and there's a good reason for that space problem, as I'll talk about at some point in the future). Those get weeded, too.

And slowly, with each pass through, I'm thinning out what's gotta be packed. Plus I've found a whole bunch o' books for next year's read-alouds. Today I should get to the end of the picture books... but I can't even imagine how long middle grade and young adult will take me. Ah well, at least I'm doing my summer reading....

2 comments:

Becky said...

Before my eldest was born, I used to volunteer at the library on Friday afternoons, reshelving and checking out books. The only problem was that I would get caught up in all the good books that were supposed to go back on the shelf, and I'd end up checking them out for myself. I was my own best customer lol.

So why is the library moving? I know, I know, I'm probably not paying attention :)

Camille said...

Story picture books are the hardest area of the library to weed in my opinion. Good luck on the weeding and the move.