No Shhing Here

For the record: I love FICTION eBooks. We circulate Kindles in my library (check out our program here , here and here ) -- it's a popular offering that plays an integral role in meeting our students' reading needs. My beef is with non-fiction eBooks that provide simultaneous access to titles. In the next few hundred words, when I say "eBooks" I'm talking about this type of non-fiction. These are books provided by traditional database vendors or in collections directly from the publisher designed for research (not high interest texts that kids read "for fun"). Because my school library system is in the process of developing a regional collection of eBooks, I've been thinking a lot about the subject. In the past few days I've tried out eBook options from more than eight different vendors, and out of the whole mix, only one company provides anything worth getting excited about. My biggest complaint about the vast majority of non-fiction eBoo...

I'm not neat by nature. Is that weird for a librarian? Neatness is my Achilles heel, and if wasn't for my fabulous staff, the library would be in a constant case of disarray. Luckily, there are times when a little disorganization is a good thing.  I've noticed when you send a group of kids to the stacks to find a book, they just stare blankly at the shelves with their hands in their pockets. They don't have the motivation/drive/energy/ambition to actually pull books off and look at them.  The best way to address the issue? MAKE A MESS! When I have classes that need to select novels,  I spread piles of books out on our large work tables. Usually each table has a theme (maybe organized by subject matter or genre or whatever we're studying), and the kids spend 2 or 3 minutes at each table, quickly evaluating as many books as they can. When they see one they like, they add it to their list. At the end of the activity, they rank their top 5 finds, and then as we dis...