Newbery Winners Collection

Few things are more exciting to a children's librarian than ALA's Youth Media Awards. There were so many deserving books honored this morning, and I can't wait to get my hands on all of them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is jumping for joy over books today.

In honor of today's announcement I figured I would share a little about a new collection I've started at my library: A collection of the Newbery Award winners.

There are a few different reasons I created this collection:

1. It makes it easier for kids to find an award winning title to check out. The kids in my area get a yearly assignment to read a book by an "award winning" author, and this collection makes the process of choosing one just a little big easier.
2. Moving these titles from our juvenile fiction collection provides more shelf space in what I consider the most crowded shelves in our children's area.
3. A separate collection will hopefully bring attention to some of the older and less known Newbery winners. These books seem to get lost among the more popular titles in our juvenile fiction collection.

The steps I took to create this collection were similar to those I took when I started our graphic novel collection.

1. I weeded to make space for this new collection. This happened to be in our reference section, which was in dire need of some weeding. 
2. I gathered existing Newbery winners from our collection and recataloged them. I choose JFIC NEWBERY as the call number for this collection. Each call number is then followed by the year the title won.
3. We were missing a few titles so I purchased new copies. The added advantage of this is that many of them have newer, arguably more appealing, covers.
4. I made a sign to identify the collection and draw a little more attention to it. 

If you have any questions about this collection, or would just like to share your joy over today's awards, I would love to hear from you in the comments. You can also reach me on Twitter (@MsKellyTweets).

5 Steps to Starting a New Library Collection

I've recently started a  new collection at my library: Graphic Novels. I've wanted to do this for a while, but haven't had the shelf space available. We recently got a new Information Desk and Tech Center with additional shelving, so I finally had the chance. Based on my experience here are the steps to take in starting a new collection.

Step 1: Gather existing items that would fit the collection: It is always better to start with what you already have. In this instance I gathered the few graphic novels we have had spread throughout our Juvenile Fiction collection.We didn't have many, but it was definitely a start.

Part of our existing collection of graphic novels.

Step 2: Get suggestions for new items to add: This is where Twitter comes in handy. I reached out to my Twitter friends and got some great suggestions from Lisa Mulvenna about what graphic novels are "must haves". There are also many booklists online that can come in handy. For graphic novels ideas I turned to the 2013 ALSC Graphic Novel Reading Lists.

Step 3: Make your new collection identifiable and searchable: Our existing graphic novels had a "graphic novel" sticker on the spine but were all labeled as JFIC. To make searching easier I changed their call numbers to JGN.

Our new spine labels and stickers.

Step 4: Bring attention to the new collection: A new collection is useless if nobody knows about it. I put our graphic novels with our new books for about 2 weeks in order to call attention to them. I think this worked pretty well. Many got checked out and I noticed many people browsing through them during that time period.

Step 5: Evaluate the collection's success:  Look at circulation statistics to make sure your new collection is getting checked out. Anecdotal evidence such browsing and in house use can also be good indicators of how your new collection is doing. I will definitely be looking to see how the graphic novels do at my library.

A portion of our new and improved graphic novel collection.

If you've added a new collection at your library how did you go about it? Any other advice you can give?