Picture This!

By Kim Tolson, Children’s Librarian

“Do you have any truck books?”

“I would like a story about a princess.”

“Where are your dinosaur books?”

Working at the desk in the Children’s Room, these are the type of questions that I hear from kids and their parents almost every day. And the answers to these questions are rarely simple. If you want to learn about different types of dinosaurs we can show you where those books are - in the non-fiction section under 567.9. However, if you are looking for an illustrated story about a dinosaur, there are a few other steps involved. Because the books in our picture book section are organized by author’s last name, you need to choose a specific dinosaur story and know who the author is before you can find it on the shelf.

While the staff in the Children’s Room are and always will be happy to give suggestions and offer help, our goal is to make the library a place where kids can feel empowered to browse the shelves and find something that they will be excited to read. That’s why we are going to be making some changes to the way that we organize the picture book collection. We think that grouping books into categories (such as Cars, ABCs, or Going to School) will make our collection much more reflective of the way that kids (and adults!) think.

One of the challenges has been deciding how many categories and subcategories to use and what to call them. We need to think about what will make the most sense for our users. We will also need to make decisions about books that might fit equally into more than one category. As a part of this process, we have been looking at other libraries that have tried a similar picture book arrangement. Learning what others have had success with and what they would do differently allows us to get a better idea of what might work best for Medfield. Although this is a big project, it will be a huge step towards making our Children’s Room a much more kid-friendly and kid-focused place.