Q&A

Setting up a new library

Posted by Susan Corrigan on April 11, 2010 at 15:47

I've just begun the task of organizing our church library - can someone (anybody - everybody!) help me with ideas to organize our book and media selections and institute a tracking system?

 

Thank you!!

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  • Michele Bond April 17, 2010 11:52
    We are a small, but growing church. I'm trying to plan ahead while at the same time being wise about our very limited resources. My goal is to do what needs to be done now, making it so that as the library grows we will not have to backtrack and redo everything.

    First thing I did was divide the library into 2 parts: children's ministries and adult/everybody else. Our Sunday School teachers are big users of the library -- so I wanted to make sure that what they needed was easily accessible. In this section are curriculum, books on teaching children, and kids literature (fiction, biography, nonfiction). The adult section also includes fiction, nonfiction, biography. I debated for months about whether or not to have a non-circulating reference section. Teen/ya resources are non-existent at this point.

    I decided to use Dewey because the cataloging is easy to find and it is a system that most people have some familiarity with. I picked up a book when I joined National Church Library Association that has just the 200's (religion) to help with original cataloging (think its called the Church Librarian's Handbook). To simplify, all nonfiction in our library gets a number in the 200's, even if the publisher provides another number. I've worked in corporate, college and school libraries for the last 15 years, so I am very comfortable creating original catalog records.

    To track individual books we have placed a sticker inside each book with a unique id number; this is they number keyed in for checkouts.

    I'm still working on piles and boxes of books, there is so much to sort through and so many decisions to be made. At this point, I think audio/video will be organized by title (again, will use numeric ID tags to simplify checkout and tracking). I hope others respond so I can see what others do!

    We are using BookCat for the catalog, it has more than we need at this point and will allow us to grow.

    Hope this helps!
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    • Susan Corrigan > Michele Bond April 17, 2010 14:27
      Oh, Michelle - you are so much more advanced than we are!!! Thank you for responding to my question - I appreciated it as I really need some direction. For ten years our library has been pretty much 4 shelves of books there for the borrowing. Nobody tracks them, no identifying system - or any other system for that matter. I inherited a scuffed up gray plastic index card box with the most confusing numbering - there's no use even trying to figure out what was behind it. We have such a strict guideline for what can and can't be included in the library that I'm concerned about growth. I was kind of horrified when I saw Bambi get tossed into the rummage sale pile because it wasn't appropriate for the children's section. Good luck with your library - I'm sure I'll be asking for a lot of help as I work on this!
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