Catch the Possibilities

For the last year and a half I've been visiting a group of 6-12 month old babies at one of the preschool centers in my community. I also visit the next two older groups of kids on the same day. For simplicity's sake, I've been reusing the plans for my 0-36 month in-house storytime. If you're a regular reader of Mel's Desk, you'd be familiar with most of the storytimes I present. I plan to have 20 minutes of "group" time and like to keep the book count down to 2 or 3.

Things are going well with the upper two age brackets, but I wonder if I'm providing the most that I can for the youngest group. Since I can guarantee a 2:1, 1:1, or 1:2 adult:child ratio with the current crop of in-house attendees I have, I know that bounces, tickling rhymes, fingerplays, etc. can all be done easily (as long as the child is in the mood). At the center there are, at the most, 6 kids in the class and 2 adults. So I find that all those rhymes, bounces, fingerplays, etc. don't work-- or work but not as well as I think they could.

At a previous library, the department also did regular outreach to this age group, but it was to a preschool on a college campus, so in addition to the teachers, extra students were always present, and we had a volunteer who would come, so that there was a 1:1 or 1:2 adult:child ratio and a lapsit-style storytime was possible.

I've tried experimenting with some props or exploratory play segments. For instance, today I brought a large plastic bear (from this set) and set it on the floor at the beginning of our time. I left it there and after a bit, some of the babies starting being more curious about the bear than me being there. They all had a little time holding or examining the bear before I left. I've also done a counting rhyme (10 Little Books to the tune of Michael Finnegan) with actual board books. As soon as the books were stacked up in a pile, the babies needed to be touching and opening them, so we took some time for to play with the books. But those have been kind of last minute, fly by the seat of your pants sort of decisions. On the whole, I like to be more thoughtful than not when it comes to assembling a quality storytime. :)

Since I only visit the kids once a month, the babies aren't comfortable enough with me to want to sit in my lap for a bounce. How do you all manage storytimes for such young ones in situations where a 1:1 or 1:2 adult:child ratio isn't possible? What strategies or activities could I try to add value to the books and songs I'm already using?

Does your library weed on a schedule? Specifically in the youth services area where we care for so many collections? (at last count, I think I have 31 separate collection codes that fall under my jurisdiction!) One of my process improvement goals for 2014 is to get myself on a schedule for weeding. I love to weed, so it's not that the collections have been neglected. In fact, all the children and teen collections have had several, thorough goings through since I took over almost 4 years ago. But now I'd like to get on a systematic schedule that allows me to make my way through the collections in an organized fashion on a regular basis.

Lately, most of the weeding I've been doing has been driven by areas too full to shelve recent returns or collection reorganization projects. That kind of "emergency," situation-based weeding will always take place, but is not the kind of model I'd like to sustain as everyday business.

I've looked through the revised CREW manual, and tried some web searches, and while lots of helpful information on how and what to weed is out there, I'm not finding what I'm looking for.

So, readers, do any of you work for libraries or systems or departments that have weeding schedules? Have you made your own, formal or informal, schedule? How do you approach your collections to make sure you are covering everything in a timely fashion? Do you aim to hit every collection once a year, or less frequently? Please share your wisdom! If you have any documents to share, email them to amy [at] catchthepossibilities.com

Thanks for sharing in this learning and growth opportunity!

At the end of the year, many teachers at the elementary school in walking distance of the library contact me about bringing their classes down for a tour and to check out a couple items. I love these visits, and am still working to create, tweak, and perfect a fun "field trip experience" inspired by pretty much everything Sara does on Bryce Don't Play.

The problem is, I am one person and am in the throes of last minute summer reading planning. Due to scheduling and culture and all sorts of things, these visits are squarely on my shoulders. If I'm not going to be here, I've been told to not schedule tours.

So. I need a better system. My question to you, wonderfully talented readers, are what have you done to make scheduling visits to your library (when they are in high volume in a short amount of time) more successful? Shorter visit times? More classes at once? Setting a limit and making visits a first come, first serve thing and when the slots are gone, they're gone? Initiating the conversation?

Please comment-- I'd love to hear your thoughts!

I'm calling this a Q&A, but really, I'm hoping YOU all have the "A" part.

Background: When I started at this library, the shelves were wall-to-wall everywhere in the children's department. So I started weeding. I love to weed, especially when it's not hard to pitch stuff, as in: "Oh look, this book last circulated when I was 8; dump it!" which was a common process for me in the first year or so. Now that I've been through all the collections for the "obvious" self-sitters, and weeded and replaced for condition (thank you RFID tagging process), I'm able to spend some time really looking at what we've got and what we don't.

Present: My latest target has been the 900s. As I was trying to do some ordering of country books, I found that a majority of the collection is more than 10 years old or going to be 10 within the next couple years. Then I kept going, and found the same was true with our state books, and most shockingly, a majority of the books about American Indians were published in 1991. (The American Indian books being so bad was on my radar, but at the time I was first weeding, I left them until I could assess which ones were actually still circulating).

Question: Okay, you were all wondering when I would actually get around to the question part, right? Here's my dilemma. Do you knowingly leave outdated books on the shelf to "at least have something," or is it better to just weed them on the basis that they might contain misleading information? I'm running into instances where the most recent book to replace a title available through our vendor is already more than 2 or 3 years ago, which I can't justify spending money on. I've made a big master list so now I will know at a glance which things need updating, but I don't know what to do with the old stuff in the meantime.

Advice? Thoughts? Amusing anecdotes?

The Future
But reading Mel's post made me really question the music portion. I had been feeling like there must be a piece that I'm missing that curriculum for commercial program addresses, as there was little flow between the classes and I wanted there to be. Unlike storytime, which I see as one-off events, M&M felt like something which should start somewhere and grow.