Library challenge

Mrs. Yingling, a librarian friend of mine in Ohio, is hosting a challenge in which she's asking other librarians to answer some questions and post some pics of their libraries. Here's my info.

1. List the number of students in your school and volumes in your collection. 450 6th-8th grade students; 20,737 volumes

2. State the year your library was built and/or refurbished. The building was remodeled and this became the library in 1992 (this space used to be the GYM!)

3. List one BEST feature and one worst feature of your library. The feature I like best is our new inviting, comfy seating area.

4. Tell us one dream you have for your library. One dream I have for my library is for it to be used by classes ALL day EVERY day. Other dreams are expressed in the picture captions below. Oh, that money were limitless!

5. Include a picture(s) if possible. Here are some pics of my library


These are the stairs down into the library. There are lots of great posters on the walls, but I sure wish my library were more central to the school instead of being way down in the dungeon. You really have to want to come here - you don't just stop by.


This is the entryway to our library. I love and adore the old fashioned card catalog,even though we don't use it at all anymore. And I love my rain gutters that my dad helped me hang to display books as the kids walk in. Everyone who sees that loves it. I got the idea from Jim Trelease. Usually it's less messy, but we're gearing up for our big book exchange this week, so those boxes are full of donated books for that! You can see the corner of the student self-checkout station there as well.


Here's our fun new seating area. We got a little grant to buy furniture and got a donated coffee table and bookcase. It's a comfy space for kids to hang out which we never had before. I have the new book section, the Battle of the Books spinner rack, the magazine spinner an the graphic novels all in this area to help draw kids in even more.


This is our study section with enough tables for a full class of students to sit and work or listen to booktalks or whatever. It used to be more crowded, but some serious(ly needed) weeding helped free up a lot of space since I could remove whole shelves. I have Internet, a laptop (old but it works) and a digital projector in this area for teaching.


The fiction section and science textbook storage area. At least they're brightly colored...


These are our computers. I'm grateful to have something in here for kids to use for Internet research and games at lunch, but these computers are old and slow, and I would love to find a stash of money under a rock I could use to buy all new computers in here - enough for a whole class, not just half the kids at a time.


Our Playaway collection which the kids really like and our high lexile books. I separated them out because there are some teachers who require kids to read at their lexile level, and the students with high lexiles were struggling to find books.