The children's books can breathe again !

If you've wandered up on the second floor east recently, you'll notice you can see some empty space where children's books have been fighting for space for the last several years.  A much needed weeding project has just been completed, thanks to the wonderful student staff from Circulation.  We moved nearly 1,000 books out of the circulating collection and they are currently making their way through the Cataloging office to be officially removed.

I've been working with this collection for more than 25 years and it has a different focus at particular times in its life.  When I first arrived, I was a little amazed to find that a large part of the collection included multiple out of date copies of encyclopedias (remember those?).   Later, stories that helped children navigate through life events such as the birth of a sibling or a divorce were a growing part of the collection.  When it became clear as we moved into the new library that we would have limited space for children's books, it was weeded to focus on primarily religious texts and themes.

More recently, the success of the Storypath website has meant that we are purchasing the books that are reviewed and books that are used to make connections with Lectionary texts each week.  That had the shelves straining and so another weeding project finally got underway.

We will continue to place the focus on supporting the Storypath site as a resource to our students, faculty and patrons.  We have also kept a fairly large selection of children's Bibles and Bible storybooks.   And we hope that being able to actually move the books on the shelves will make it easier to browse the collection and find good books just to read for the fun of it.

So thank Ryan, Jay and Kelli when you see them, and come enjoy the great resources of our children's collection on the east side of the second level!

Ann Knox
Instructional Resource Center