Introducing Dani Gustavich, new Children’s Librarian
As you probably know, Miss Pat retired on February 29th of this year. As the new Children’s Librarian, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and to fill you in on some of the changes which will be taking place in the Children’s Department over the next few months.
I have a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Wilmington College, where I majored in Communication Arts. Since graduating, I have been a substitute teacher for Canton City Schools, a lead teacher at a family care center, and a co-director of an after-school program. My most recent position was as the Children’s Librarian for the Stark County District Library’s Main location. I recently earned my Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science from Kent State and now, here I am, working for the wonderful community of Dover.
My goal is to make the Children’s Department more user-friendly for all of our patrons. In order to do this, we are weeding the entire collection. This means that we will be discarding the non-fiction books which are out-of-date and replacing them with more current information. The remainder of the collection is also being gone through to discard/replace popular books which are in poor condition and those books which have not been circulating very well. Some of our older collections, such as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, have been moved to our basement collection (ask any employee for access to this collection) in order to make room for new materials. Rest assured that we are not discarding every book which meets this criteria. We don’t like getting rid of books any more than you do, but it has to be done to make room for new material. These decisions are not made lightly.
Refreshing our collection is a time-consuming project, so please bear with us as changes are being made. The first major change we are working on is turning the “Tween” shelving area into a popular series and graphic novel section, which will allow you to easily find the books you are looking for without having to look in the paperback and hardback sections. The remainder of the paperbacks will be shelved with the hardback fiction.
Another thing we will be trying out is adding the paperback beginning readers to the hardback beginning reader collection and using the “box” shelving for popular character books. For example, super hero books will be housed in one of the “boxes,” whether they are paperback, hardback, beginning reader, or easy readers so that you can see them all in one location.
As new books come in, they are being labelled with the A.R. level on the spine, which will help our Accelerated Reader students to quickly and easily find books in his or her level. We will work towards labelling the rest of the collection as time permits. In addition to labelling the books, the A.R. and Lexile levels are being added to the catalog so that you will be able to search by A.R. or Lexile level. At this time, there are not enough items entered in the system to make this a worthwhile search, but I will keep you posted.
I am very lucky to have a job that I love and am here to listen to and to answer and questions, concerns, and/or comments you may have. Thank you for welcoming me to the Dover Community.
Happy endings,
Dani Gustavich
Children’s Librarian