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In each school library (or community library, or church library) you are setting up you will need the following:
 1. A motivated person who loves reading and sharing information
The librarian is the library’s best ‘resource’. A living advert for reading. Being friendly, useful and welcoming, building up an approachable and light hearted response to library users, and mentoring good reading habits is easy for someone who genuinely loves reading. This is often NOT the English teacher. In fact, teachers aren’t always the best people to be librarians, because they want to teach in the library. And that’s a no-no. Because libraries are about self-driven learning, and about equality, and about one-on-one interactions between the librarian and the reader. There’s no authority figure in the library. It is the only place where children and teens can make their own choices, can pursue their own interests, can be free to be themselves. It is, therefore, the most effective place to learn about the world! Finding a community volunteer, a parent or a ‘gogo’, an unemployed tertiary student, an ex-school-student are all other options that schools can take to ensure that there is an inspired, friendly librarian on the premises. Whoever you choose, they need support and respectful, motivating interest from the school principal and SGB.
Tip : don’t put up an off-putting wordy list of ‘rules’. Put up a YES YES list with 4 words that describe the library behaviours you want. We have ‘sharing, respect, tidiness, quiet’. We only have one, our average number of daily users is 170, and it works very well.
 2. A collection of books organized into sections
Building up a collection of books takes time but very little effort. Asking for donations by putting a flyer up at the supermarket, browsing at fetes and markets, asking church members to bring in books, exploring charity shops, swapping donated books that you don’t want at the book exchange are all cheap and innovative ways of adding to the collection. Buying new books is expensive and in most cases irrational! Think about making books; free information from Wikipedia, a printer and some creative computing, or sticking newspaper and magazine articles into an A5 scrapbook, can get a book on Global warming onto your shelves for R10 whilst buying a book on Global warming might cost R270! Buying second hand books means you’re saving trees, contributing to charity shops and local businesses rather than big publishing or book multinationals and you’re saving money. There’s a bonus here; you’re also turning into an expert building a unique and useful collection as you will begin hunting specific books. Librarians who sit in offices flicking through catalogues learn nothing except the new prices. Try to collect books at all reading levels in each subject, covering all the subjects (see bookshelf labelling below). Your true books should be about equal in quantity to your story books. Keep a notebook in the library where library users can add books they would LIKE to see on the shelves, and take that notebook with you on your searches. Maintain the books regularly, never using sticky tape (only the white glue that dries clear). Above all, LOVE those books. Each one might is a potential friend just waiting to inspire someone.
Tip : Don’t cover anything in plastic; the book lasts longer than the plastic anyway, it’s just a waste of time and money and adds to pollution!
Printout a dewey look up for your library now
3. A method of sharing those books among people in an easy effective way
Most libraries feel that they have to have cards, envelopes, date stacks, stamps and all kinds of bits and pieces for operating a system of ‘circulating’ the books. It’s really much easier than that though. Why not get a nice big file (A-Z) and assign each person a lined page under the first letter of their surname. Resist filing library users in grades; this way each individual doesn’t have to belong to a graded group, and it’s easier to relate to each person AS an individual. Each time someone takes out a book simply put the date and the name of the book on a line, and when they return the book, put the return date. The bonus here is that you get a reading list growing for each library user. Because your library users are all in the same school, you don’t need their names and addresses, a membership form, or to send out overdues. If you notice that some books have been out for too long; simply mention in assembly that people should remember to return library books and get new ones out, and follow this up by saying that you have NEW wonderful books for them to look at!
Tip: don’t fine, it puts people off. If they return a book late or return a damaged book, just talk to them in a friendly way, as if you were talking to your best friend, about how they can get it right the next time. After all, the reader is more important than the book every time!
 4. Bookshelves clearly labeled
There are 3 sections of books; Reference books that don’t leave the library (they’re always available to be used there), non-fiction (or true books) and fiction books (or made up stories, plays, poems etc). Melville Dewey thought up a system for putting books into sections so that like books sit next to like books on the shelf. It makes sure that people know where to find the information they are looking for. Some sections will have a lot of books, and some hardly any, so the sections are not of equal size in any library. Although it looks complicated at first, it’s actually very easy. It looks like this:
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000 - 99
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Books about information
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100 - 199
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Books about how people think
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200 - 299
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Books about what people believe
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300 - 399
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Books about how people live together & relate to each other
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400 - 499
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Books about how people speak, read and write – human languages
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500 - 599
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Books about our Earth and its relation to the universe
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600 – 699
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Books about how things work and how things are made; machines, body systems etc
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700 - 799
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Books about arts and leisure; painting, ballet, sports, games….
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800 - 899
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Made up stories; novels, poetry, plays – literature
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900 - 999
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Books about people and places, now and in the past
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Tip : simplify the titles and group the sections according to the number of books you have and your shelving; for example, the 000’s and the 100’s can occupy a single shelf labeled ‘Thinking’. All the religions ‘Believing’. The first part of the 300’s ‘Relating’, the next part ‘How the world works’ etc. We change words like Technology (600’s) to ‘How things work’ and Manufacturing to ‘How things are made’. This means that everyone can understand what’s in any section. Try organizing your library like a bookshop that invites browsing. Make up your own labels – ‘mind body and soul’ sounds intriguing in a bookshop, and library users would respond to in the same way as book buyers!
Printout our adapted shelf labels now
Printout our “Where to Find Your Book” poster now
5. A space or room organized into zones
It is vital that the view into your library from the door should be the first clue that reading is an enjoyable thing to do. Stand at the door and imagine a room that has comfort and appeal. Enticing books arranged attractively on shelves, a carpet and cushions to lie on while reading, an easy chair or window-seat where you could curl up on a winter afternoon and read, study space that looks like you WANT to study there… these can be set up easily. The trick is to use items you would find in a home rather than items you would find in a classroom. If the room was a classroom remove the chalk board, make sure the room is clean and fresh with natural ventilation and light from windows. Classrooms are all about authority plus ‘have to’ plus ‘must’ plus ‘all together and the same’, people feel like a graded number there. Libraries are about individuality plus choices plus coziness plus relaxation, people feel like themselves there. The second most important thing is to make sure there is a lot of open floor space, as much as possible floor space. Visual clues are often overlooked by those setting up rooms, to their loss. In a library you want the people using the room to feel safe, relaxed and calm. Cushions or beanbags, rugs and (even if you never switch them on) lamps, give an atmosphere of ‘you can read here’ to a room.
 Tip : keep bookshelves against the walls, not in the middle of the room. Keep the middle of the room for small furniture and open floor space. Make sure you can see everywhere in the room from the issue desk. Ask kids to leave their bags outside, or provide lockers for their bags; this will free up double the amount of space as each student bag takes up the room of another student!
Printout our large section labels now
6. A notice board and/or display area to show changing topical issues
So often we find classroom and library literally wallpapered with old faded posters stuck with sticky tape, crooked and skew, outdated, unread. Never put up too many posters or notices. Nobody reads them and they give a frenzied and eventually a tatty look to the room. If you need wall décor hang a framed picture! Keep a notice board where topical posters can be displayed one or two at a time. Use pins in a board. If there’s no board, just a space of wall with a desk in front of it to put out a book display, put up the posters with press stick (never sticky tape, this damages the poster and the wall) and soften the desk with a cloth. What to display on the board? Topical (or new) issues in the community, student’s artwork, information about new books, new movies that have been made from books, calendar celebrations like Diwali, Mothers Day or Women’s Day, national or world issues highlighted at special times, like Arbor (tree) Day, Animal Rights Day or World AIDS Day. We have a ‘tickle file’, which, month by month, shows all the celebration days in the year that you might want to display. This will help you to organize the posters you collect, and you can collect up some nice ones by making them or by writing to (or visiting or phoning) Government Departments, tourism offices, travel agents, video outlets or organisations like Soul City.
Printout our Tickle File of celebration days now
Example of a school library policy
example letters - schools asking for stuff.doc
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