Welcome to the Neighborhoods: The Beginning

I started researching picture book neighborhoods in 2012-2013, presented my ideas to staff and, with much input and discussion, completed the bulk of the work by the end of 2014. As I worked on this project through 2014, I saw picture book circulation increase by 4,885, reaching a total of 27,214.

The Neighborhood project went through a lot of evolution. I drew heavily on the ideas of Kathleen Larson at Bloomer (and a big thank you to her for being so kind and sending me all her information), the process at Darien in CT and several other libraries who have done similar projects.

My evaluation of the first three years was positive - neutral. The few patrons who were frustrated by not being able to find the book they wanted by just looking for it alphabetically were the minority - usually teachers outside our service area or folks who didn't use the library regularly. Those who wanted specific titles quickly got into the habit of placing them on hold. Prior to creating the neighborhoods, I had far more requests and complaints from patrons who wanted subjects (tractors, dinosaurs, potty-training, etc.). I also found it to make collection development easier as I could look at the sections both physically and data-wise and see which ones need more materials and which need to be weeded or aren't circulating. Around this time I also had a big jump in remote collections/teacher requests and this arrangement made it possible to handle that increase.

After the initial surge in circulation, the numbers fell back a bit; This was due, in my opinion, first to the shelves being extremely crowded - I was not allowed to weed in any significant way at this time but added almost 2,000 more books to the area in three years, making it seriously overcrowded. I also found there were issues with some of the categories being confusing. Sometimes a lot of staff input isn't helpful.

The major problem area was the titles which were not relabeled and were left by author. These included "favorite authors" like Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle, and Fancy Nancy, but also a plethora of books that did not fit into any of the current categories or which I did not want to relabel since they needed to be weeded. There were also some smaller sections that needed to be adjusted - we ended up with all the planet books in Things That Go/Space and math books in Fun/Create (there were some people who strongly disagreed with this (-:)

In 2017, while my associate updated and created new signage, pictured above, I updated the area to include several new subcategories and weeded or sent to be recataloged and relabeled everything in the general favorite authors section that was not a specific character or favorite author. I wasn't completely satisfied with the update - I didn't like having Pets and Farm in community, there were issues with the arrangement of the Ourselves section, and I need a separate Tales section for folktales and fairy tales. 

So, if you are thinking about doing Neighborhoods, a couple things I'd suggest thinking about. First, it's a LOT of work. I did a lot of the re-cataloging myself, but our processor had a lot of work to do relabeling everything. It took over a year and was at times very frustrating and stressful. My original signage was not the best; it was greatly improved when my associate took over and handled it. Get your signage organized first. I think the process would have been simplified and improved if I'd done small sections one at a time. That wasn't possible for me, but it may be for you. I also made a Youtube video, which was put on Facebook, and that helped people understand the process a lot better too.

Over the years, I've learned that the collection needs to be fluid too. Things change in the way people look for things, the language they use, the books that are available, and in what is popular.

Stay tuned for the next updates to the Neighborhoods!