Re-organize children's books in library

[iteles]

We officially have a LOT of children's books, which is wonderful, but now makes it very hard to find specific books.

This calls for a re-organization!

We had already somewhat started this by having the bottom 2 shelves as the 'first 12 months' books so that they are easily accessible by children, but we need to expand on this.

Here is my ideal, if things fit:

• Long bottom shelf has two types of books:
  • Pre-mobile baby books (high contrast books mostly) stacked so that we only see the spines
  • Books that are great for 6-12 months (texture books, tiny books for tiny hands, some base concept board books like 'Ten Tiny Toes' and 'Opposites' and sturdy lift the flap books and base ones like 'Dear Zoo' that have a half dozen words per page and 'Follow the Tractor'), facing outwards so covers can be seen
  • I'm HOPING this will free up the small bottom shelf as you walk in the door to the left for more space for other books but TBD.
• Review the remainder of the books and propose a category split here, for example 'Animal fact books' (more like National Geographic) and 'Animal Story books' (ones like the Lion Inside, The Koala Who Could, etc), Lift the Flap books, Books on Feelings and Emotions, Colours, Numbers, More advanced themes like the Germs book and How stuff works. This is an example, I can't really make the categories without looking at the books which is why I'm asking for a proposed set of categories first
  • These would still need to follow some height order so that mobile babies who are standing or walking but only 12 months can't rip our most fragile books to shreds (more advanced lift the flap concept books like the counting book with flaps or the germs and emotions lift the flap books come to mind as well as non-board books). The exception here for now are the animal facts books which are thin pages but we want them to be very easy access for Alex (I would put these on the back wall with longer shelves as they are a bigger category anyway)
• If there's space, have some of these books also facing out
• Remove All seasonal books, which will now be placed back on rotation (so all Winter, Autumn and Summer books to be removed for now)
• Remove All dinosaur books for now, they are a concept that doesn't make sense yet and are just confusing to someone like A who loves animals and can't understand why he can't see these ones
• Bring all the non-musical books in from the below-staircase area

@nelsonic On a separate note, I'm VERY keen to remove all the musical books from under the stairs Very soon (possibly to a little book shelf by the music area) because in the next couple of weeks they will start to become irreparably sun damaged where they are and that is NOT cool.

@Stephanymtr In the short term, could you please cut out some strips of cardboard from the big boxes we have ready to go to recycling and line the whole shelf that the musical books are on, essentially blocking the light coming in from that window so that books are in direct sunlight please?

[Stephanymtr]

Hi @iteles I covered the window, replaced batteries of some of the music books, removed all non music books from the bottom shelf and this is what it looks like atm:

I have also gone for a walk around the house gathering all children's books and bringing the back to the library for sorting.

I have also gone through all the books from bottom 3 shelves (of both bookcases) gathering all the ones that needs to be put away. Where shall I store these ? (JJ bottle for reference lol)

You mention about removing the dinosaur books, what about books about monsters ? like these for ex

Thanks :)

[Stephanymtr]

I finished the bottom shelf for the little ones. There wasn't too much space left for books to be displayed outwards like you asked. You will notice that I took advantage of the few tall books to help them all stay standing. However, the chances of all those books collapsing is very high when a little one pulls one book out. A couple a of book ends should help with that problem.

[Stephanymtr]

All done!

Bookcase 1:

Categories:

• Non fiction (older kids)
• Interactive (older kids)

  Because I brought all the non music books to the library, I thought of placing the pirate ship and train book here.

• Comic books (older kids)
• Jokes (older kids)
• Music + singing (older kids)
• Religion
• Nature + gardening
• Puzzle book
• Monsters

  I kept these books together bc I’m waiting on your feedback whether to remove them or not. If we keep them on the shelves, It will make sense to place them into other categories.

• seasonal

  for all rotational books

• construction
• Firefighters

• I thought the rotational books and all of A’s current interests/obsessions could go on this lower shelf. Not sure if it makes sense since he is a lot taller now, but it would be cool if they were next to each other. • It was REALLY tricky trying to keep books that aren’t mobile baby friendly away from the lower shelves. I have divided the books into categories, almost all the categories will have at least one book with some sort of a fragile feature like fill the flap for ex. • I used masking tape to create tags for each of the categories. I was thinking that when you guys come back, you will have a test drive to see if they all work before we laminate them.

[Stephanymtr]

• You might notice some of the shelves are not as crowded. Removing some of the seasonal books helped with that. I still need to know where to store them. Here is a photo of all the books I removed:

[Stephanymtr]

Bookcase 2:

Categories :

• Adult supervision

  these are the only children’s books I placed on the 4th shelf. They are very fragile and need adult supervision.

• Animal facts
• Animals
• Counting
• Collection ?

  books with multiple stories/tales

• Stories ? (Older kids)

  I wasn’t sure what to name this category. These are books with different kinds of genres, but they all tell a story 🤪

• Classic Literature
• Feelings and Emotions
• Colors
• Sign language (Bottom shelf)
• counting
• colors
• animals
• interactive
• contrast
• short stories

• I placed most of the smaller books on the far right side.

[Stephanymtr]

I was also left with these 2 big books. I'm not sure where to put them.

[nelsonic]

The way I solved the "big book" challenge in Inês Parent's house Playroom / Library was a dedicated extra-tall shelf:

I see this as the only way to resolve the "big book" challenge ... ✅ Anything else will just be temporary. 🙃

So ... with that in mind, We need to plan for a new shelf (or set of shelves) in the Library. 🆕 I have a sketch in my notebook (in Braga) that I did a while back ... ✍️ We have an open issue: https://github.com/dwyl/home/issues/215 but it's priority-2 ... 2️⃣ If we want it to be done then @iteles has to revise the requirements and increase the priority. 🔝

[Stephanymtr]

I had to place certain books sideways, so that they could all stay together (in their category) regardless of their sizes. A new bookcase would be great to store books with differents heights! The work I did here to categorize children's books should be helpful to visualize how much shelf space will be necessary to store everything. I would encourage doing the same with the adult books. It will be a time-consuming task, but useful to get the proper measurements for new shelves. https://github.com/dwyl/home/issues/216