Biography Reorganization

 When I saw the biography section upon my arrival to my school's library (first year as librarian), I wasn't too impressed.  Most of the books were old, not in the best condition, didn't include color photos, or included people that the kids didn't know.  I used about $500 of my budget to buy some biographies on recent people of interest (Drake, anyone?) and decided to divide and conquer the whole section.  I decided on 9 different groups:  authors, leaders, athletes, explorers, notable people, entertainers, scientists & inventors, musicians, and artists.  Each group was assigned a color and I ordered color-tinted label protectors to place over the already-existing spine labels.  Then the heavy lifting began.  I moved the books to their new locations and started stickering.  Then I made signs for each group and voila!  The section is so much easier to use!

I don't have an amazing budget but I do have colored paper and a laminator machine.  So here's my eye-catching sign for the section.  

The shorter bookcases housed the smaller collections.

Sorry for the glare on the sign!  This section is entertainers, including actors, comedians, and the odd ones the kids love like Houdini.

I started with all these books in the "Leaders" section but I didn't like it.  There were so many that didn't really fit into that category like Anne Frank, Helen Keller, Mark Zuckerburg, etc.  So I created another section--Notable People--and they went there, along with Presidents' wives, company creators, etc.

Self explanatory and easily the most used section.  I just updated it with some newer biographies of the kids' favorites.

My tiniest collection!  We'll see how much use it gets and maybe I can expand it next year.

Who knew we had so many books on authors??  I weeded out some of the duplicates (not sure we needed 7 biographies on JK Rowling) and added some newbies.

My biography display gets hit by kids who are too lazy to search the biography section.  I try to put eye catching books on this display.