Picture Books
PROS OF FLIP-THROUGH/FACE-OUT SHELVING
- Ease of use
Often, caregivers and children will gravitate towards books based on the appearance of the cover; let’s admit it: we’re all guilty of judging books by their covers! Allowing them to easily see the covers and even more easily flip-through many titles quickly allows them to find their selections in minimal time and with minimal effort. This, of course, is in comparison to spine out, traditional shelving which requires users to slide titles out one-by-one to see the artwork.
- Increased circulation
A natural consequence of making a collection easier for your patrons to browse is that they are likely to find more of the types of items they want and will thus check more of them out.
CONS OF FLIP-THROUGH/FACE-OUT SHELVING
- Climbing
Our young patrons are often full of energy, creativity, and a touch of curiosity, which means our shelving can become a stand-in for various high altitude terrains in their imaginative play. More than once, staff has stumbled upon a young patron standing upon the bars of the lower shelves. Less often, we’ve heard the crash of our shelving as it could no longer bear the weight of the child standing on it.
- Reduced collection size
Depending on the physical space you are working with, the aggressiveness with which you weed your collection in preparation for the switch to flip-through shelving, the popularity of your collection (and thus how many items are out at once), and the degree of fullness you allow, you can plan to lose between 20-40% of your spine-out collection.
ARRANGING THE MATERIALS
Moving to a flip-through arrangement from a spine out, traditional shelving arrangement does not mean you have to also move away from shelving the materials alphabetically by the author/creator’s last name.
Possible materials arrangements include:
- Entirely by the author/creator’s last name
- Entirely by categories/subjects/topics
- Combined – pull out your most popular categories/subjects/topics and shelve the remaining collection by the author/creator’s last name
If you do decide to make the transition to shelving entirely by categories, do be advised, you may find it difficult to quickly locate items if caregivers:
- Want the collected works of an author/creator.
This can be worked around by creating a section for “Featured” or “Favorite” authors or series (an example list can be found below). Generally speaking, however, moving to category-driven shelving will mean most author/creator’s materials are going to be split up in the space based on individual book topics.
- Are utilizing an award list, a teacher-curated reading list, or any other collection of specific titles.
When arranging entirely by categories, you will also want to be sure you maintain some order within the collection by at least loosely alphabetizing your collection within each of the categories. You can accomplish this by labeling each item with the first letter of the author/creator’s last name and keeping them roughly in order rather than in a more strict order by the author/creator’s full last name.
If a category ever grows too large to quickly locate items and weeding is not the best option, consider re-examining the category and determining if the category should and can be further split into sub-categories. An example would include moving from a general Things that Go to sub-categories, such as Things That Go/Cars, Things That Go/Planes, etc.
CATEGORIES FOR FLIP-THROUGH/FACE-OUT SHELVING
| CATEGORY | SHORTHAND | SUB-CATEGORY |
| All About Me | AAM | Bedtime Birthday Feelings Health Manners New Home Potty Training Safety |
| Animals | Dinosaurs Bears Birds Bugs & Spiders Farm Pets Primates Water Wild Cats Wild Dogs |
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| Art | Colors Music Performance |
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| Cartoons & Movies |
C&M | |
| Communities | Construction Farms Firehouse Helpers Transportation |
|
| Fairy Tales |
FT | |
| Friends & Family | F&F | Adoption Brother/Sister Divorce Grandparents Loss New Baby Parents |
| Games | Picture Puzzles (Look & Find, I Spy) Sports |
|
| Holidays | Christmas Easter Halloween Hanukkah Thanksgiving Valentine’s Day |
|
| School & Learning |
Letters Math Numbers |
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| Science | Plants Space Weather Fall Spring Summer Winter |
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| Stories | Graphic Novels Pirate Scary Western Wordless |
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| World Around Us | WAU | Geography Religion Travel US History World Cultures World History |
FAVORITES FOR FLIP-THROUGH/FACE-OUT SHELVING
| Author | OR | Series |
| Brett | Amelia Bedilia | |
| Brown | Angelina Ballerina | |
| Carle | Arthur | |
| DePaola | Babar | |
| Eastman | Bad Kitty | |
| Ehlert | Berenstain Bears | |
| Emberley | Clifford | |
| Henkes | Curious George | |
| Keats | Elmer | |
| Lioni | Eloise | |
| London | Fancy Nancy | |
| Martin | Franklin | |
| Mayer | Ladybug Girl | |
| Munsch | Llama Llama | |
| Numeroff | Madeline | |
| Pfister | Maisy | |
| Pilkey | Olivia | |
| Polacco | Pete the Cat | |
| Rylant | Pinkalicious | |
| Sendak | Scaredy Squirrel | |
| Steig | Splat the Cat | |
| Thomas | ||
| Van Allsburg | ||
| Wisner | ||
| Willems | ||
| Wilson | ||
| Wood | ||