Here in Michigan, and particularly in Ann Arbor, the national headquarters of Borders and the home of the first Borders, back when it was a single independent bookstore, are melancholy if you mention “the bookstore model.”

We watched huge numbers of Borders stores close this winter and have heard rumors from our friends and friends of friends that the end of Borders might be nigh. Now they’re liquidating and closing them all down, starting tomorrow. Our friends work at the corporate office of Borders and staff the stacks downtown. (Oy - it’s Ann Arbor Art Fair this weekend. Let us say a prayer for those poor souls working the flagship store smack in the middle of Art Fair as people throng to the store for a cool break from the heat surge and the lure of discounted books.)

Many of us remember the “old Borders” in its original location back when it was staffed by hungry PhD students with voracious interest in and deep knowledge of the content areas they served. Special orders? No charge. Just need a quiet place to sit for a few hours? No charge. And so our department’s informal listserv has been full of memories that revolve around Borders that go back to the 1980s. Instead of CDs, they sold music scores. Instead of wrapping paper, art posters. More Kafka than coffee.

So it’s a bit weird, at first glance, to hear about converting libraries to bookstores given our particular hyperlocal context. (Not to mention that when Borders moved from a more classic bookstore shelving system to a “grocery store” shelving model, I had one heck of a time finding anything by their categories in the children’s section.)

But take a look at what is happening at Red Hawk Elementary in the article below, and it seems to make perfect sense to abandon Dewey and to classify books by topic instead. In fact, I always harbored a suspicion that part of the reason why non-fiction circulation was so high, K-5, was that kids liked to go and find “all the cat books” in a single place.

I have heard, anecdotally, that secondary school libraries that sort their fiction according to genre see an enormous jump in circulation. Take a look at the article below, and ask yourself: especially with our youngest learners, does Dewey work? Or would this unconventional model meet learners where they are? (LOVE LOVE LOVE those big signs in the photo!) Which “sacred cows” are worth saving? Which are worth experimenting with? Which systems support librarians more than users? Which systems are essential in order for a library to be able to function with what is likely to be a reduced staff?

I love the bold action taken below, even though I might have been too much of a scaredy cat to try it myself. And I love the idea that if you abandon Dewey, you can also shed a whole bunch of lessons about Dewey, searching for titles, etc., which opens up room for other kinds of instruction. What do you think?

Red Hawk Elementary library scraps Dewey Decimal System for bookstore model - Longmont Times-Call via kwout

We’re now in Day 2 of Banned Books Week.

A few days ago, The New York Times invited teens to comment on whether or not books should be banned in school libraries, especially after a Missouri management professor wrote indicating his belief that Laurie Halse Anderson’s now-classic Speak was equivalent to soft pornography. (You can read the author’s response here.)

I returned to the Times blog post today to see what kinds of responses students had made. (You can do the same by following the link below.)

Most don’t agree that books should be banned.

That’s good.

But it’s not the whole story.

That’s bad.

Why do some teens (or commenters posing as teens) not believe in book banning?

BECAUSE THEY DON’T USE THE LIBRARY. It’s not their place, so it’s not their issue. It just doesn’t matter to them.

We’ve got teens who somehow make it to the New York Times Web site (so there’s some reading going on in their lives, or parents/teachers pushing them to the site) WHO DO NOT FEEL CONNECTED TO THEIR SCHOOL LIBRARY and don’t care what happens there.

If you’re reading this, you’re more-than-likely a school librarian. And if you’ve been reading this blog for a few years, you know this issue of teens articulating that the library isn’t their place has been discussed before.

Last spring, we wrung our hands and mourned the loss of many more school library jobs around the country. In our moments of greatest pique, we (and I mean the universal we — “we” as a profession) pointed fingers at small-visioned administrators or unsupportive parents.

Now it’s fall and we’re settling into our new realities. Some of the pique has been forgotten. We’re soldiering on. But now is not a time to forget that advocacy is an everyday activity … or that we may have teens in our libraries who would say exactly what the commenters in the blog post say: the library isn’t a place that matters to them, so who cares.

Who are the teens in your school who say they’d rather go to Barnes and Noble than your library? Who say there’s nothing in your library worth reading? Those are the folks we need to be reaching out to.

A thought: set yourself a goal this week to reach out to at least one non-library student this week. Let us know how it goes.

Are There Books That Should Be Banned From Your School’s Library? - NYTimes.com via kwout

The marvelous Peg Sullivan of Smith read yesterday’s post about libraries really focusing deeply on creating conducive learning spaces for students with disabilities. Peg is a great thinker about how library spaces can be used to promote deeper thinking, and as a long-time member of the AASL Standards and Guidelines Implementation Task Force (yup, that’s a mouthful), she has a deep commitment to the AASL Standards that we now refer to as L4L (Peg coined the term).

She said:

“One comment: if I ruled the world, we would be burning traditional carrels. I always find them dark and lonely, sort of like a “time-out.” I would only use them for privacy in the school office or something. There are better ways to “nest”; for example a small table by a window. People need light to think. Carrels are the sleep pod for overworked college students.I had a friend who purchased a number of rockers and put them into a quieter area of her library for the autistic students.  The rocking motion helped them focus, calm down and near by windows and picture/coffee table style books gave them something to look through during bad times.  It seemed to work extremely well.”

She added that she has an upcoming article on study rooms and will give a heads-up when it’s published.

The conversations of the past 24 hours reminded me of something else (really, people, even though I had a Major Birthday this year, did I have to get a sieve where my crackerjack memory used to be?).

One of my former students got her principal to agree to remove the tops of the carrels and open up her space. A very clever repurposing from a very clever librarian. (See her detailed information in the comments below.)

Addie noted on Twitter last night, “Maybe we need to create study carrels 2.0 - focused spaces that don’t feel like detention.”

I’d love to hear from you about Addie’s thought. What IS a study carrel 2.0? Is there still a need for individual learning zones in a school library or learning commons?