Book Shelving

I am inspired to write about book shelving for the homeschooling mommies/virtual friends (N@wies) who are considering to make their own home library.  After setting up a number of Kindergarten libraries, I have realized that storybooks will never be neat and tidy on the shelves if we will strictly follow how books should be shelved at usual libraries...with all the codes that needs to be assigned for each book using Dewey Decimal and AACR 1,2,3, it's simply impossible for small children to follow it.   We, librarians, just have to find the simplest way possible for them but still keep the idea of a library organization...at the same time teach children to be responsible in tidying up their own books.

For home libraries, sorting of books may look easy but it's really tricky as there are books that can cover various topics, it's a very technical work if you haven't realized yet...but at the end of the day, whoever decides to organize the collection makes the call. Books can be sorted by height, by series, by color, by author, and so on...but your child wouldn't care and most probably wouldn't remember who is the author, or what series, or what color nor height.  I suggest it to be arranged it by genre.  For example, all counting/number books goes to one place, all animal book goes together, all language books are kept together, it can also be grouped by the popular or your child's favorite author.   The idea here is they will know where to look sensibly rather than what they remember...obviously they will not be able to remember everything.  And as the collection grows bigger so as what they need to remember or not.   Keeping the same topics together will also help them become a better researcher in their school days.  School or Academic libraries may have a different organization scheme (mostly LC) but the idea of keeping the books with same topic are the same.  Fiction, non-fiction, reading level can be labelled with colored sticker for easy identification when all the books are in one box, yes a simple box will make a difference.  For younger children, browser box are more appropriate more than the regular shelves.  The key here...the books and the boxes should be clearly labelled.

Here are some of my shelving inspirations.

When I need some furniture, I make sure I explore all recycling possibilities before buying a new one.  So it made me look on the internet for some ideas and here are my personal favorites:

 

 

 

 And here's what I've came up for my current Kindergarten collection.  From boxes of photocopy papers to book browser with a little covering here and there , here's what we've created.

We tried to use the cheap plastic baskets but it's too small and too low for the books to stand.  The boxes with 13cm high are just perfect.

  For the other collection, we bought a knock-down shelves from Tesco since we do not have a lot of space for browser box.  It also aims to cover an old door.