I’m going to STEAL a huge part of a post from the internet (namely Abby’s blog). This is terrible plagiarism and I encourage you to go to Abby’s blog and tell her how awful it is that I’ve done it but then I encourage you to share with the Columbus Library as she asks you to do here (Abby rocks!):

Feckless Friday: I Cried at the Library Edition

I didn’t really cry, I just got choked up a little bit while relating a story about my reluctant reader who used to check out piles of nonfiction books and now doesn’t check out anything.

Some backstory, perhaps? Our library, the Whetstone branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, moved the junior nonfiction into the adult section, totally intermingled with all the adult books, making the formerly-easy-to-access-and-super-awesome junior nonfiction books completely difficult and overwhelming for children to browse. Many moms I know have complained about the change, so I set up a meeting with some administrators, the branch manager, and the children’s librarian to see if we could figure out how to fix the issue. Here I give a huge shout out to the moms who came with me and the moms who were there in thought. You guys rock.

Turns out, the library people know that easy access to books is an important part of promoting literacy. They also know that the junior nonfiction is not easily accessible when it’s all mixed in with adult books. We wanted to make it clear that the most important part of a child’s library experience is that magic that happens when a she’s wandering around the stacks and she just stumbles upon something that she didn’t even know she was interested in. That’s where true life-long, self-motivated learners are born.

….

If you feel like supporting our cause, click on the “contact us” button at the library’s website and let them know. Just a couple of simple sentences: “I support encouraging literacy in children by making junior nonfiction accessible to young people. Separate the junior nonfiction from the adult nonfiction.”

I went to the meeting this morning even though Whetstone isn’t our “home” library but our homeschooling world has off and on been centered on the attached rec center so my kids have spent a fair amount of time at the library. It’s part of our community, too. And also I support the other families who use that library and share their concern that the shelving policies aren’t serving the kids well.

I felt like everyone in that room agreed that splitting up the collections made the most sense but I also felt like the first 3/4 of the meeting was the library staff trying to convince us that this wasn’t true because they do not feel able to come up with a better solution.

I bet if we all committed to figuring out a way to make it easier for kids to browse juvenile nonfiction that we could do it. After all, in part because we are people who value learning and books and who do things like show up to a 9am meeting on a very icy March morning, clearly we’ve got the smarts to figure it out. So why not quit arguing about whether or not shelving the nonfiction together makes sense (they would say, “It was better before but we can’t do what we did before so it’s better now even though it was better before” and we’d say, “Wait … What? No it isn’t.” And they’d agree and then say, “But it’s better now except that it’s worse.”) and let’s start the much more fun arguing about how to SOLVE it. Right?

Anyway, obey Abby — I always do and life is more fun as a result except I still don’t want to do writing prompts and she still won’t read Jane Austen but whatEVER — and contact the Columbus Library if you feel so inclined. It helps if you’re a librarian or a resident of Central Ohio, sure, but if you care, we’d appreciate the help!