Come for a Walk in Our Neighborhoods Kalamazoo Public Background and Why We Did It Examples of Other Darrien, Addison, Farmington, Middle Country “Popular” Picture How our JE range looked before we changed to Neighborhoods Picture Neighborhoods Planning Task Force Move all the books from branch locations to Central catalogers, processing? No. Why it worked for us Subcategories? No. A balance of browsability with findability Too cumbersome. Space on spine label Labels – limited number of characters Scope of the project Not easy non-fiction Not early readers, leveled readers. Why not? Workflow Considerations about closing down and doing all at once. We did it slowly so that we could stay open. This was good. Categories List Trump List • Favorites trumps Festive • Things that Go trumps Festive (but not Favorites) • For each title, how will it be used? How might this book be used? Favorites List (a living document for new titles) Animals behaving like humans don’t go into Nature neighborhood. Or do they? Spine Labels Test cart What we did, what we learned What did our workflow look like? Pull books from the shelves Sort books into Neighborhoods Two Trucks for Reference Sheet Type, Then Copy & Paste Print Labels for Existing Copies Place Labels with Each Category Run Children’s Staff Applies Labels The Outliers

• Circulating Books

• New Materials

• Branch Items Communication with Dischargers The New Way for New Materials

• Start cataloging new materials into neighborhoods immediately • Get Children’s Staff and Catalogers on the same page • Make project documents easily accessible (Category definitions, Trump list, Favorites list) • Prepare to question and be questioned Branch Shipments of Titles that are only at that location Moving forward/Measuring success Reconvene task force Report to our board of trustees What would we do differently? Are we glad we did it? Q and A Preliminary and ongoing tasks: Weed in advance. Also weed midway through if the whole process takes a while.

Inventory as we go along since each item gets touched for relabeling.

New items are placed into neighborhood categories by cataloging librarians as part of materials processing workflow.

Weekly Workflow (for existing ):

Monday: Two children’s librarians set aside a 3 to 4 hour period of time at the beginning of the week to categorize books in the existing picture book collection into neighborhoods. Use colored slips of paper that correspond to the color that is representative of each category. The amount each week is usually two large size book trucks or around 500 books.

Place a colored slip in each book and then arrange in alpha order by neighborhood – this keeps the new labels which Cataloging and Materials Processing Department (CAMP) will create in the same order that the books are presented on the carts.

Children’s librarians notify circulation discharge staff of our progress so that they can be on the lookout for not-yet-relabeled items as they are returned that are in the range we’ve already been through. These are the first that we cover each week so they are first in order when they go over to CAMP. Starting with these is an easy way to keep items in alpha order which minimizes processing time.

Tuesday: Tuesday morning, two full trucks of children’s picture books (approximately 500 items) are waiting in the cataloging area. Items are sorted by neighborhood and are in alphabetical order within each category. Each book is marked with a color flag that matches the designated color of its neighborhood.

The cataloger’s process is as follows:

1. Count and record the total number of books for statistical purposes. 2. Bring up the record for the first book in a categorical run. 3. If necessary, refer to a pre-existing reference sheet to match color to category. 4. Type neighborhood designation (e.g., “JE Stories ”) into Central Call Number field of record. 5. Copy and paste the neighborhood designation into branch Call Number fields. 6. Print labels for all current copies (Available, In Transit, or Checked Out); do not print labels for any books out of circulation (Missing, Lost, Discard, etc.). 7. Keep books in order that they were on the cart, which will also be the order of the labels. 8. Once an entire category run is completed, take the run of labels and place them at the beginning of the run on the cart. 9. Begin the process again with the next category on the cart.

CAMP staff modify the catalog record for each item, adding the Neighborhood category, a new set of labels for the book. Labels and books are returned to Children’s room staff who separate the labels and send branch copies on to branch locations. (There are fewer titles at the branches). We look at the end of the process for items that are only at the branch locations – they will have been missed.

Wednesday: After organizing the labels, Children’s Room staff sends the branch location labels to the branch locations. Then the Children’s Room books are relabeled – new spine label, inside back cover label, and color-coded transparent overlay is applied. It is at this time that each physical copy is inventoried.

Shelvers place items back onto shelf – back in alpha order by author, not in Neighborhoods, for now.

Branch staff receive labels for their locations for the copies of titles that they and the Central Library also own. Labels and color overlays are applied to their copies of the books. There are a few copies that only the branch locations own - they will be assigned into neighborhood categories at the end.

When all of Central’s collection is finished, all picture books at the branches that were missed (because there is no Central copy) are called in and changed.

Re-order shelves in all buildings in alphabetical order by author within each neighborhoods