We were swamped with books today so I helped put them back. The rest of the staff was so grateful... so it's not the most exciting thing in the world but I felt good. Honestly, there's so much to do at a little library to keep it running. For example, I remember how the librarian at the desk, Adair, was checking out books, telling me what to do, and handling a phone call all at the same time. Sometimes there really isn't a spare minute!
However, I did have an interesting conversation about the library's labelling system. There are so many different categories. There's a room for all new releases (fiction, non-fiction, young adult fiction, etc.) and there's the children's room, which has a ton of categories. They have a holiday section, biography section, graphic novel section, picture book section, and so on. One of the sections is called the "easy reader" section - basically, between the difficulty level of picture books and chapter books. Marianne, the tech and teen librarian, explained to me what the easy readers were and the pros and cons of having so many labels. She recalled how these easy readers were just considered picture books when she was a kid. While she agreed that the labelling made it easier to find the appropriate reading level for a child, she also worried that so many labels "boxed kids in". Instead of looking for topics the children liked, she noted that many parents just asked about reading levels. I agree with her that perhaps there's too much of a focus on labelling and not enough on letting kids explore their interests.
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