Reflecting Forward
with Jen Legatt

My goal when setting up the Jackson Middle School Library three years ago was to make the JMS Library as approachable as possible.

In the Anoka Hennepin District, the largest in the state of Minnesota, I was the first Librarian to establish a genre based fiction system. Since adding genres that first year, I have undertaken other projects to make the collection even more accessible.

• The original genre work took a full year. We are still putting books into the “best place” for readers to find them.
• The Sports section was our first project, adding genre labels that match the theme of the books. Basketball books have a sports label with a basketball image. We relabeled these books three years in. The “tape” we used the first year was coming off. The color was also too close to other genre colors. We replaced the labels lighter genre stickers, making the sports labels easier to read.
• We have secondary genres such as romance, books in verse, and animal stories. These help readers find their favorite themes that cross genres.
• I have simplified the nonfiction section with Dewey-Lite. I will do my best to explain the major decisions in each part of the nonfiction section in future posts.
• I have discreetly marked books that are at an approachable reading level, books which will be better matches to our striving readers and readers new to English.
• This past year, we marked the Graphic Novel section with the basic genre/topic of the books. That way, a Graphic Novel reader who is looking for a historical book, a memoir, or an action book can better find their “best-fit” book on the shelves.
• We are currently working on a historical book project. We are working on marking the time period and historical context to the top of the books. Often, kids request: “books from WWII,” “books about Japan,” or “Civil War books.” These labels will help us to connect those readers with relevant titles. They will also help us to match up the I Survived series and books by Alan Gratz with others on similair topics. Some students love reading the I Survived or Alan Gratz books, but don’t expand beyond their comfort zone. I would love to have them exploring more books within the topics that interested them. We did a few “easier” to define topics last year, as part of a student teacher’s project. This summer, I am working on creating labels for the other 80% of the books.

This is just SOME of the work we have done to make the JMS Library accessible to all readers.

Why make books “grab-able”?

• Why do I want the books to be “grab-able” to readers? Don’t I want them to use me, as their Librarian? I have 2,000 students and just one Librarian. We are the largest middle school in Minnesota, and one of the largest in the nation. That is a lot of young readers.
  
• At the end of the 2023-24 school year and the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, I did not have a paraprofessional or clerk to support the Library. I was doing check outs, lessons, returns, and shelving. Having students be self sufficient was essential at this time.
  
• Overall, having the collection to be self- guiding for the readers who basically know what they are looking for is essential to supporting so many readers. If I can help historical readers to find their favorite time frame or nonfiction readers to find the gaming books, it allows me to focus on the students who need support finding just the right book. Many students have an idea of what they are looking for when they visit the Library. These students can use the visual cues in the Library, the digital catalog, and other physical resources (which will be covered later), to find their books.
  
• Then, I can focus on the students who are reluctant, who don’t know what they may want to read, or those who are resistant to reading. These are the students that I can work to make connections with. To find just the right book. That is the magic of the job.

In the following posts, I will explain the work I have done to make the Jackson Middle School Library Approachable to all students.

The image supplied is an example of our Historical Fiction project. I’m currently 70% through that collection. I’ll share my processes in the next post.

Historical Fiction Project:
Date and Historical Context