Home - LITR 322 - Children's Literature - Karen Gibson - Fall 2025

Librarian

We’ll spend about 20 minutes going over things specifically about children’s books and libraries, 15 minutes on searching, and 15 minutes out at the shelves.
This should translate to help you be a better library user in general. You also get another session with Bryan about finding articles in a few weeks.
Purpose of different libraries? (Crumb, Sheard, public, school, other)
Different purposes drive decisions on arrangement, access (shelves vs bins), collection, etc.
Ways in which books are arranged to find things matches needs of patrons (for children and/vs for adults)
- Analogy to grocery store
Main ways to arrange: LC vs. Dewey vs. by author/age level vs. format (e.g. kits)
Big challenge for all of them: You can only put a book in one place, even if it fits multiple categories (more later)

Tell me about the assignment.

What you want to do - Find books

By browsing (we’ll do this last)
When you need to search the electronic record rather than browsing.
- by subject (assisted by LC) – rain forests, empathy
- by author (tricker in LC); Ludwig Bemelmans’ anecdote
- by level (hack by # pages and size in cm in LC) – brief aside about children’s publishing, view the PowerPoint
Non-fiction vs. fiction and challenge of fiction by subject rather than by author
Value of children’s books that have won awards (How many of you are going to be teachers?)
- Publishing/education as a business, how it helps and hurts your search
- Discuss the Awards Handout.
You can only put a book in one place common challenges: counting books, alphabet books, stories without words, poetry (“verse”). So find these with the catalog, not by browsing.
No system has a good way for non-standard constructions (pop-up, hologram, finger holes, etc)
Call Numbers and the Library of Congress

MLA - copy (and then EDIT and FIX) the citation from the catalog

A word about Dewey

[E] is used for easy fiction intended for children through grade 3 or age 8. With the exception of alphabet and counting books, [E] is not used on nonfiction material.
[Fic] applies to fiction for children beyond grade 3 or age 8, as well as young adults through high school. These designations are added by CYAC catalogers.
Traditional folklore and fairy tales, poetry, and certain other works are classed in the same numbers used for adult works on those topics.

A word about Banned Books

Quiet on the 2^nd floor

Reshelving – don’t

Tour of the shelves