Book Ordering – Henry Style – Part 3

If there are topics you’d like to see – let me know.   Right now I am thinking  student management might be a good one.

Meanwhile – under ordering – Dana commented on the last blog post with some interesting thoughts.

LAMINATING PAPERBACKS AND DUST COVERS

Dana wrote:

We — cover the books with contact paper…We laminate the covers and place the stickers, upload records and make minor changes.

We sometimes use a “contact paper” kind of laminate if we have to do our own paperbacks in house.  We order Kapko covers for paperbacks from our jobber.   Very durable.  Oddly – our kids don’t much like paperbacks.  They go for the hardcovers.  Laminating dust jackets is a great idea.  Do they ever get damaged by the heat?  I think my assistant might LOVE this idea.  She hates covering books.

REPAIR COMPANY

Dana asked who we use.  It is Mutual Library Bindery & we have been very happy with them over the years.

PURCHASING SERIES TITLES

Dana wrote:

I’d be interested in your opinion on this idea. I typically purchase only the first five books of a series unless it is a perineal favorite like Magic Tree House or Junie B Jones. I figure, if the students are still that interested after five books, they can go to the public library.

I like that idea – unless the series is WILDLY popular and will probably remain so for a lengthy period of time.  Good way to make the limited money stretch.

NON-FICTION & REFERENCE

Dana said:

With regards to nonfiction, I am so relieved to hear you say that you find yourself backing off of the reference type books. I just gutted ours and have a very small section, only for demo purposes for when I teach what an almanac, atlas, encyclopedia, dictionary etc are. Once I introduce them, I do let the kids check them out until that idea runs its course with the students and then the collection sits and collects dust until the next unit.

Last year we combined our reference and circulating non-fiction.  I LOVE it.  Like you, I now have only  a very small reference section.  I call it “quick reference”.  It is one bookcase, with our last remaining print encyclopedia set, plus almanacs and atlases.  That’s it.

Dana goes on to say:

Having said that, my gosh do our students dig that nonfiction. Dogs, birds, dinosaurs, planes, military, sports, animals, etc. I can NOT buy enough cook books right now. I just bought a rather large pile at Borders because I can’t find them in library binding. Do you know where that might be available? With nonfiction, my biggest struggle right now is the battle of do I continue to buy more country books or push CultureGrams as an alternative. We have so many cultures in our school that how I solve this ordering dilemma is I look for books that offer something new and fresh, such as that looks kid friendly. What are you experiences?

Alas!  Our high school students seem to have lost that zest for non-fiction.  I wonder why?  As for countries – I think setting up a good web page for country information and providing Culturgrams is a good compromise.  It is just too expensive to maintain that kind of collection which goes out of date so quickly.  As for cookbooks in library bindings – the only place I think you might find that would be a jobber such as Follett who specialize in library bindings.  Actually you should be able to get any kind of binding from most jobbers.  The thing is – cookbook publishers are probably marketing more for home use than for libraries.

That’s all for today folks.  Again – if there are topics you’d like to see – let me know.   I am thinking of student management in the libary.

3 thoughts on “Book Ordering – Henry Style – Part 3

  1. Hi Jacquie,

    I am so jealous of librarians starting out now who can read your blog for this awesome advice. How I wish this had been around 10 years ago when I was getting started. Your advice is so concise and easy to digest. I’m going to encourage all newbies I meet to subscribe to your blog.

    How are you recovering from your system crash? I bet you’ll have some great advice once you get through that mess.

    Molly Clark

  2. Thanks for the kind words Molly. I am all about using the power of technology to make life easier. I finally woke up and realized that the detailed emails I was sending out to my past and present interns might actually be useful to a wider audience. But most of all – I figured it would save me time in the future if I could sent them brief notes, along with a detailed blog post. Saving time in the long run. Computers demand a different mind-set! Keeps my young on the inside, if not on the outside 🙂

  3. Pingback: Librarian “Paperwork” | Wanderings...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *