Tweaking the Children's Department

One of the things I love to do is make small little tweaks in my kids' department. It's amazing to me how moving even a small collection can have a big impact. It shakes the patrons out of their comfort zones and let's them see the department with new eyes. Here's an example of one we did earlier this month: moving the J Kits from the back wall of the picture book area to front and center right, where we used to have the BIG books.

Before, the kits were sort of fading into the wall, which you can kind of see in this extremely grainy photo (sorry, I forgot to take a before photo and had to crop some kids out of an older one).

After switching the Kits with the Big Books, we're looking like this:

The wall behind the big books is looking pretty empty, so I ordered a Pete the Cat poster from ALA. It's here and framed, just waiting for my boss to hang it. 

And here's a close up of the new-to-us (our other branch is now interfiling picture books with CDs in with the regular picture books and offered it to us) kit rack: 

I am hoping the kits will get a lot more use here, now that they are in a much more visible location. If they don't start circulating more during the rest of the year, my plan is to to remove them from the bags and interfile them with the rest of the picture books, as our other branch is already doing. We do have a large number of teachers and homeschooling families that I think would like to use these with their students, if only they knew we had them! By the way, I am still crazy about the turtle sandbox we use for board book storage. 

P.S. As some of you know already, I've taken a new job with a county system here in Michigan. I'm going to be working in the children's department at their main branch starting next week! I'm really excited about my new library and looking forward to working with my new co-workers (if any of them are reading this, HI!!). I will certainly miss my the staff and patrons at my current library though. As far as the blog goes, it might be quiet around here until I get settled in at my new library. I'm looking forward to sharing the great things my new system's youth staff are up to with all of you.