Youth Services Critical Conversations Club (YS3C)

Supported by funding provided by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services administered by the Library Services and Technology Act, through the Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.

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Thursday, October 14th: 10:00-11:00 a.m.:

Picture Book City- Genrefying Picture Book Collections

                                  

Presenters: Alexis Hardy and Muriel Wheatley, Librarians at Timberland Regional Library

In 2021, Timberland Regional Library re-cataloged the entire picture book collection in their 28 branch shared collection. Inspired by Storytime Katie's Picture Book City, TRL staff recataloged over 13,000 unique picture book titles (and relabeled over 36,000 books!) into 13 themes to increase browsability for patrons. In this session, project leads Alexis Hardy and Muriel Wheatley will give an overview of this project. They will discuss why the library decided to re-categorize their picture books, how they logistically went about it, how they decided what categories to include, and what the impact has been so far.

After their presentation, Alexis and Muriel will be available to answer questions, and lead a facilitated conversation about genrefying picture books in your library.

Discussion Questions to consider:

1. How do you think re-organizing picture books would impact browsability and findability in your library?

2. Are there any categories you think would be particularly useful for your community?

3. What barriers do you see that would make accomplishing a project like this challenging? How could these challenges be overcome?

4. Do you think genrefying/categorizing your picture books would be a good fit for your community? Why or why not?

5. After hearing about TRL’s Picture Book City project, do you have any ideas of how you could implement something similar in your community? How would you go about starting a project like this?