Probably one the most innovative projects I have ever been involved in was when we decided to rearrange our chapter and picture books section. We chose to move away from the classical alphabetical by author arrangement to a genre based approach. The motivation to take this step came from the daily recurring question from children looking for a particular kind of picture book "Where can I find a book on knights, princesses, magic, mystery, fantasy…" You name it. Slowly we became convinced that the current organization of fiction books by author was not one that was relevant to our patrons. We believe that our library should be organized in such a way that first and foremost maximizes accessibility to our students. So we set about to make that happen. We used the principles of Design Thinking as set out by the NoTosh consultants working with our school and produced several iterations before settling on roughly 15 chapter book and 35 picture book genres that were generated mostly by our students. The result: even Kindergartners are now much more able to locate the books they want without help. The downside: a few disoriented teachers who are used to scooping up all titles by one author need a bit more of our help to do so. We have made exceptions and kept the books written by the most popular author study authors (Eric Carle, Leo Lionni…) together.
We have been thinking about the following question for a long time at our elementary school. We asked teachers and students what they had to say about this. Both agreed that giving credit through properly citing the source of the photographs, video, music, websites or books used is important, yet admitted that it didn't always happen. One of the things that strikes me with the traditional Research Cycle models such as the Big 6 is how they present research as a linear process. First you define, then you go through your information strategies, then you locate information and so on. That's how it's visually presented at least (see image). When I do research that's not what I do. When I see kids at work that's not what they do.
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June 2015
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