reading level riot

before i start my rant let me tell you that i do in fact know some teachers personally, and they are not retarded. i assume these "non-retarded" teachers are not the minority, but evidence has proven the contrary.

so it has come to my attention that someone at the local school is dissatisfied with the library. they work with parents and say that a lot of parents have been complaining that they are unable to find the books that are on their child's "level." complaining to the school, because it is the school that gives the assignments, not us.

now, these reading levels are made up of letters which determine what books the child "can" read. we do not use levels here. when a kid comes up and says "what book would be good for me?" we ask the kid a series of questions and then pick out books for that child. OR , another way to put it is that instead of just pigeonholing a child into a meaningless system, we give each child individual attention and help them find a book which is appropriate and interesting to them. this is how it has been in public libraries since the dawn of children's literature. if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

so this person from the school was complaining that the public library should be organized not by dewey decimal system, or by genre, or author ... oh no! instead the library which serves the ENTIRE community, should be organized by the local school's reading level system. of course! let's cater to just you, local school! forget the community as a whole!

it was even suggested that the school would send help so that we could re-arrange our collection of tens of thousands of books to their liking. then i helpfully suggested that if they want a library that caters to them, maybe they should work on their own school library. surely, it would make sense if the school wants a library that caters to the school's reading level system, why not do this at the school library. see where i'm going here? but alas, the school library doesn't have all the books that ours does. so instead of them working to improve their collection, they figure it will be easier and cheaper to just mess with us. thanks!

you might be asking yourself, "self, what's so bad about reading levels?" well i'll tell you. reading levels are not inherently evil. but here at the library it isn't our job to teach kids how to read or to give them boring reading assignments. our job is to foster a love of reading. so if a kid picks up a book that interests them, we encourage them to read it. maybe it's a graphic novel, maybe it's a magazine, maybe it's a book that's a little too easy for them but they'd enjoy reading it. we don't care! we just want people to read something that they like reading. then later, if they want to read something more difficult, they can read that too.

imagine if adults had reading levels ... i would love to go up to someone and say, "oh i'm sorry sir, you can't read that new dan brown book. the lost symbol is totally below your reading level. here's a copy of the canterbury tales instead." or maybe next time i see a nice old lady picking up a danielle steele novel i should rip it out of her hands and give her madame bovary instead. you catch my drift?

and a few times i have actually encountered kids who wanted to read a more advanced book, but were afraid to since it wasn't on their level. can you imagine? some kid picks up harry potter and then finds out that it's a level above him so he puts it back and picks out something that is less interesting to him. great! what a way to encourage reading!

now, just to further complicate things ... many non-teachers believe that reading levels are a bit of a scam created by the publishing companies. for instance, they sell these "leveled" books in bulk to the schools, and many of the titles are not available for separate purchase by libraries or other individuals. also, many of the titles which are on these reading level lists are actually out of print, and therefore can no longer be purchased.

in the end, i was told i should "meet up" with this school person and "work it out." but i am a bit unclear about what there is to "work out." i think in the meantime, i will just stick to recommending quality age appropriate books to the children. like i'm a librarian or something.

periodicals perplexing no more

i don't think i've ever discussed with you the black pit of despair which has been my periodicals section for the past few months. you see, we have this lovely magazine display (shown left) that holds the magazine (each shelf flips up so that older issues can be stored behind the display area). when i first got here there were neat little stickers saying which magazines went where. and of course the magazines were all over the place, with no relation what-so-ever to the helpful stickers. then i noticed about 2 years worth of back issues of each magazine being "stored" on the shelves behind the display. and this 2-year backlog was in no particular order. yay! so i attacked this immediately, throwing out all the magazines that were more than 6 months old, and putting all the issues where they belonged. it was beautiful. and i made sure my page stayed on top of it, so for a while all was good. but then we got this extra money that we were told had to be used for periodicals. this might have been good if we weren't already at capacity for the number of magazines which could neatly be kept on our magazine shelves. so i picked out a few magazines that i thought we be a nice addition to the collection. and then a few weeks later we were inundated with something like 10 new magazines in addition to the magazines we were already getting. oh, did i mention that we also get 10 different comic books as well? so all of a sudden there is just no way that it is physically possible to keep the magazines and comics in a neat and meaningfully organized fashion. so i ordered these file holders, thinking i could put all the comics in the file holders and then keep the magazines on the shelves. i also wanted to "highlight" the magazines and try to get the kids to read them instead of only reading the comics. not that there's anything wrong with comics. so after several months of waiting (why does everything take so long?) i finally got 4 of the 12 file holders i ordered. so maybe in 4 more months i will get the remaining file holders. but anyway, in the months of waiting for my file holders i would merely try to avoid eye contact with the magazine section. yup, that will make the problem go away. but now everything is peachy keen and i have my magazines beautifully displayed. and you can see at the bottom right (below the concept books, which i also hate) i have my four file holders with four different comics. and the rest of the comics are in little piles on the shelves beside them. of course these little piles get messed up instantly, but they look good when there are no children here.

the dewey vs loc smackdown

it has come to my attention that someone out there thinks LoC (library of congress) classification is better than dewey decimal. well, i think you are sadly mistaken mr. i heart l-o-c. LoC, while preferable for large collections like university libraries, really doesn't make much sense in the average public library. and i am a public librarian, so i spit on your LoC. who doesn't love a classification system based on hundreds and decimal places ... its kind of like the metric system ... but different. so here is the breakdown, for those of you who don't know
000s - Generalities (this is also all books on computers and technology)
100s - Philosophy and Psychology
200s - Religion
300s - Sociology
400s - Languages
500s - Natural Sciences
600s - Applied Sciences (this means stuff like engineering and technology but not computer software)
700s - Arts and Recreation (sports and hobbies and artsy stuff)
800s - Literature and Rhetoric (how i love rhetoric)
900s - History and Geography
see? isn't that easy? i'm sure you'll never have any trouble finding a book again. and if something is invented or a new topic is created we just find a way to make it fit into these ten existed categories. because you can always add more decimal places. it's almost too easy. thank you melvil dewey!

the big "O"

that's right ... today we are going to have a little discussion about something in the biz we call: organization. why, what did you think i was going to say? c'mon, get your mind out of the gutter.
i have a degree in organizing. granted, i do not use these skills in my own home or in my personal life in general but i have the ability to organize if i so chose. i think that's part of the deal. you can only use these powers inside of a library. anyway, today i am working in yet another new branch (nomadic librarian that i am) and when i was getting the tour i kept hearing this one phrase over and over again. what was the phrase you ask? "this section isn't really in any order." now, i will accept that sometimes, like with a media collection so small it's not worth the time to organize it. or with picture books and paperbacks where you might just have the section in quasi-alphabetical order. meaning that all the authors whose last name start with "A" are together, then all the "B" names, but no order within each letter category. fine. sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. but to have quasi-order be the highest level of organization your library achieves? that's a little sad. c'mon, have a little self-respect. we can do better than this. so my tour guide explained to me that one of their pages* recently graduated and blah blah blah they can't keep their books in order. but i didn't buy this excuse. this lack of organization was all-encompasing and did not seem to be a new development.
so i ask you: if we don't select and purchase books, and we can't keep items in strict order ... what are we?


*page: a paid position in a library, typically filled by a local teenager, whose sole responsibility is to put away books in their proper place as well as to keep the shelves in order