How to inventory your school library in a few hours and keep track of it indefinitely.
Is This Guide Right for Your School? Identify Your Library Needs
You work at a primary school and want a comprehensive overview of the book library, because...
- You created a book list in Excel, but it quickly becomes outdated, making it hard to maintain.
- Most inventory tools compile all books into one large file, leading to loss of organization and oversight.
- Books are scattered across classrooms, making it difficult to pinpoint their exact locations within the school.
- Because you have a list of books, but teachers struggle to find them at school.
Four Key Considerations for Efficient School Library Management
1. Easy to use: How Fast Can You Complete Your Library Inventory?
Incorrectly scanning your school library can drag the process out for weeks. Adding additional barcodes, entering book information and acquiring barcode scanners... This article explains why none of that is essential.
2. Continuity: How do I Easily Maintain an Overview?
To avoid having all books thrown together after scanning, properly plan the arrangement of your overview before scanning. Are the books distributed over multiple classes? Have you labelled your books?
3. Accessibility: Empower Teachers and Students to Easily Locate Books with Smart Tools
Some schools use a sophisticated program to scan the school library, which means that only a few people can keep track of where each book is. This limits the school library's accessibility, which reduces reading enjoyment at school.
4. Advice: Spotting Collection Gaps: How to Ensure a Balanced Library for Every Student
To ensure that every pupil has access to a relevant book, a diverse book collection is required. Is your collection balanced in terms of fictional, informational, comedy, and other books? Do you have enough books for each age group?
Step 1: Choose User-Friendly Tools for Fast and Easy Library Inventory
Schools occasionally tell us horror stories about scanning their book collections.
Stories that they spent months obtaining materials and applying additional barcodes on books.
When we inform them that none of this is necessary with the School Library App and that they could have been ready in a matter of hours, not weeks, it frequently hits them hard.
Step 2: Ensure Secure and Organized Library Tracking with Proper Planning
Books are often scattered across the many places and shelves of the school, making it impossible to get a good overview of the school library with most solutions.
It is also critical that the solution you employ for scanning the school library can distinguish between the various cabinets and that not all volumes are placed into one giant pile.
It's helpful to see which books are in the library after scanning, but you also need to know where they are located.
As a result, the School Library App allows you to construct different cabinets and assign a location and name. For example:
- School Library Aula or Group 3/4 (location)
- Picture or A books (category)
- Aula - Books, or 1st floor - Information (place + category)
With the School Library App you can divide the cabinets as much as possible. For each category, theme or reading level you can create a separate 'bookshelf'.
In our 'The Ultimate School Library Guide', we answer the question of whether books should be kept at a central location or distributed across classes.
There is no right or wrong answer here, just pros and cons.
Step 3: Enhance Accessibility – Make It Easy for Everyone to Find Books
In many primary schools, just one or two teachers manage the school library, limiting access for others. They utilise a complex program and are the only ones in school who know where all of the books are.
As a result, anyone looking for a certain book is unable to find it on their own.
In an ideal world, pupils and teachers can independently search for a book in the library using any device in the classroom and see where it is located at school.
They can also search by title, author, series, and a variety of themes that are frequently used in (thematic) education.
Sticking labels on books makes it easier for pupils to find and put them back. You'll learn more about this here: 'Choosing the Best Book Labels for Your School Library'
Step 4: Identify and Fill Gaps in Your School Library Collection
To ensure that every pupil always finds an enjoyable and appropriate book, the book collection should be diverse enough.
Although most school libraries primarily feature reading books, not everyone enjoys reading them.
Teachers require books that are intended to be read aloud. Curious pupils enjoy reading educational literature, and sometimes it's just fun to pick up a comic book.
Most importantly, pupils should continue to enjoy reading. A wide variety of books is essential to cater to different interests and reading levels.
Is your school library’s book selection diversified enough to meet all students' needs?
In the ideal case, your book collection would resemble the distribution shown below. Following these guidelines ensures that each pupil can find a book that is appropriate for him or her.
Collection guidelines for primary education
- Picture books: 11%
- First reading books: 13%
- Novels category A (ages 6–8): 14%
- Novels category B (ages 9–11): 24%
- Novels category C (ages 12–15): 8%
- Informative (up to age 9): 4%
- Informative (from age 9): 8%
- Comic book (up to age 9): 5%
- Comic book (from to age 9): 5%
- Poem and rhyme (up to age 9): 3%
- Poetry and rhyme (from age 9): 5%
You can check if your collection meets this divide by sorting the books, but that will take a lot of work.
The School Library App is a valuable tool that scans your library and highlights the diversity of your current collection.
This allows you to readily detect gaps in your current book collection and make more targeted purchases.
Also read: Organize Your School Library Efficiently: 4 Steps for a Ordered School Library
