Managing the Elementary Library
Course
Policies & Procedures [3:18]
Policies and procedures are the things that help guide your program and keep it organized and running like a well-oiled machine.
Procedures are all those step-by-step things about how those things happen. For a student, how do you go about checking out a book? What are all the steps that are involved to make that happen? Or what do I do when I bring a book back, or what are the things that are choices that I can do in the library during recess, or how do I access the library catalog? Those procedure steps are more like what our students would see.
When we think about our elementary libraries, we want to think about our policies and how they help us build those relationships, that we talked about. Make sure that our students have the access that they need and keep our library running smoothly. For example, we had unlimited checkout in our school. That was our school district's policy, is that we did not limit the number of items that a student could check out.
The way that we interpreted that for our elementary school was, you could check out as many books as you could be responsible for. Our procedure was that it depended on each student, that we talked to them about if you were really always on top of things and you knew where everything was, you might want to check out three, four, five things at a time. If you were somebody whose desk was messy and you didn't know where anything was, you might only want to check out one or two.
But the idea was that it was personalized to the student and that they could check out as much as they could be responsible for. This made sure that they all had plenty of access, they could come and check out whenever they wanted, and they all could read what they needed. We felt like that gave them some ownership.
For our procedure for that though, the students knew that when they came in the library, the first thing they got was a shelf marker. They went to the shelves, they found the items that they needed, they brought them up to the checkout desk. We did self-checkout and so students knew to scan their card. They scan their books and then they scan the reset frame, and then it was ready for the next person.
That's the procedure that we had in place and we had a big poster in our library, right as you came in, so that students knew exactly what that procedure was. We always used really clear language, very positive language. We integrated some of our character edge traits into the language as much as possible. So that our procedures were real crystal clear for the students when they came in.
And we had procedures for everything. Things like our self-checkout had a procedure. What to do at recess had a procedure. We had a puppet collection, so how to play with our puppet collection had a procedure. The different areas of our library, what was the expectation. If you came into the tables and chairs area, if you came into the Story Step area, what were the procedures for those different areas. So absolutely anything possible.
And then it's always good to take a minute back and evaluate those policies and procedures, and make sure that, are they in place because it makes life easier for the librarian? Are they in place because they make life better for the students? Really taking some time, periodically, to reflect and think, okay. This is our policy. Now, why do we have the policy we have? Is there a way we can give our students more access, give our students more time with some of these things and make it a better experience for everyone?
Additional Resources
About the Author
E-mail: charvey@schoollibraryconnection.com
Twitter: @caharvey2
MLA Citation
Harvey, Carl A., II. "Managing the Elementary Library. Policies & Procedures [3:18]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, January 2018, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2135532?learningModuleId=2135578&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2135532?learningModuleId=2135578&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 2135532