It’s not all about books anymore.

If you are a librarian, then you know that book circulation has it’s ups and downs. If your library is like mine, then you’ve seen a lot of downs since the “return to school” following the Covid shutdowns. You have your regulars who come in and check out a book between each class period. Then you have your students who come in for orientation at the beginning of the year and are forced by their English teachers to check out a book and then NEVER RETURN IT. It’s these students whose shadow doesn’t darken your doorstep until the following year’s orientation when they try to check out a new forced reading material.

In our county, another challenge we are running into is the proliferation of the classroom library. There has been A LOT of money spent to increase, diversify, and widen the breadth of the classroom library here. It’s frustrating to teachers who have no space and to librarians because they see their patronage reduced.

But librarians play a vital role in schools. While teachers worry about curriculum and assessments, we are the ones who can step in the gap to bring kids back to literature and extend their learning beyond the shelves and classrooms.

So how do you keep kids coming to the Library? How do you access the kids who are Library no-shows and the kids who are just lost in the jungles of a mismatchy classroom library?

You get creative.

That’s what we strive to do in our library. We go beyond the bookshelves to entice kids to walk through our doors. We want them to check out books, but we can’t do that unless they get in our space. As this blog grows, I’ll be sharing the fun and creative ideas we use to not only bring readers in the room, but to get teachers to come in and seek out collaboration opportunities.

While this blog is written solely by myself, I do work with an amazing library team. I have a co-librarian who also came from middle school English and a library assistant who has been in the building longer than I have and has an amazing ability to put a face to a book check out even weeks after the book walked out the door! Our amazing team is supportive of ideas and initiatives that we individually and collectively present. While we each have our strengths, our comraderie helps to make our library a cohesive space that benefits all of our patrons.

You might be wondering why do a blog about my library. The purpose of this blog is to share the ideas we have come up with that have increased our patronage and our circulation. I don’t just write this to tout the amazing things we do, but to share our ideas so that your library can be the center for learning and creativity at your school, too. I am not going to hide our light under a bushel. I’m going to bring it out and brighten up the world (or at least a many school hallways as I can). I want your library to be amazing. I want you to share your ideas with me so that my library will be even more amazing.

Sometimes we get a little protective of our creations. Sometimes we are afraid others will “steal” our good ideas. But our ideas together can create the best Stone Soup that ever was! I hope my ideas and the ideas that others share in the comments help you bring your library to become the creative learning hub of your

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