Improving the physical space of my library

This week we were to post what we would change in our own libraries if we could.

I chose for Assignment #3 to improve the teacher resource section of my library. On the surface, this may look like a small change, but the benefits are huge, in my opinion. Due to limited time, I had not spent much energy on the teacher resource section up until this year.

After one year in my library (2 years ago) I embarked on a $6000.00 renovation where we added 20 computers to the library. This meant major weeding, moving bookshelves, building half walls and installing the 20 computers. You can see the results here.

After this major renovation, I felt that the main sections of my library were organized in a way that worked for us. This was true, except for the teacher resource section. This section was crammed full of a mixture of old and new resources (some of them not even in the system) and had poor signage. I found out that teachers also felt that this section was difficult to navigate and did not look through our teacher resources as a result of this. The whole renovation comes to just under $300.00 and is something that I am actually working on right now. You can see the outline of my project here.

It was interesting to see what other ideas my classmates had for their libraries. I really liked the following and can see myself adding these ideas to my "to-do list" for my library:

• improving signage in the non-fiction area
• adding sturdy bean bag chairs to the Easy section (would need a grant for this...)
• going all out with a theme (I liked Tamara's Narnia idea!) 

I'm constantly looking for ways to improve access to print and digital materials in my library and this course had encouraged me to make some positive changes.