NOTE: Many (most?) of the librarians simply shelve fiction picture books in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. Science picture books are shelved with the other science books using whatever system of classification you are using for those books. History and biography picture books are shelved the same way in their subject areas. However, Mary Schubert has a more detailed plan of classification and organization for her picture books.
Picture books can be shelved in small cubical shelves or in front-facing bins or crates or in regular bookshelves, depending on your preference and what you have on hand.
From Mary Schubert of Pursell Schubert Legacy Library in Oklahoma:
As for picture books, at some point you will still need to organize the section ideas I am going to share, alphabetically, either by author or title. Until I had an actual shelf location for most of my picture books, they were being stored in large plastic file crates or large plastic tubs. My sort divisions are as follows: (within those are also sub sorts shown in italics)
- Pic-Alpha/Count – For Alphabet & Counting Books (basic number & maybe some shape books, as I also have a living mathematics book section.) {Alpha_Pic, & Counting_Pic}
- Pic-Bible – Bible Stories, Picture Books, some of my beginner reading Bible stories (But I also have an Early Reader / Bible subject category as well for those.)
- Pic-Fairy/ Folk – Fairy Tales / Folk Lore
- Pic – Fic & Pic- General – These both sort of intertwine and are just for my extra, don’t fit anywhere else. {Animal_Pic, Classic_Pic-Fic}
- Pic-Geo P/P – Picture books about Geography People & Persons. Some would classify these as world cultures or multi-culture. For the moment, these books are not even in my picture book/ Preschool room but are currently with my other NF-Geo P/P books. {PeopleGeo_Pic & PlacesGeo_Pic}
- Pic-HF – Historical Fiction picture books.
- Pic-NonF / Bio – Nonfiction picture books, Biographies / Occupations / Communities {Classic_Pic-NF, Community_Pic-NF, Holidays_PicBk, Bios_Pic-NF}
- Pic – Sci/Nature – Science / Nature – Picture Bk, Also, Let’s Read and Find Out About Science.
My sub-sorts are mostly for my information in my database, and initially a way to help me identify other ways to tag, or search for a book. I honestly am not utilizing some of these as much as others, and in my basic picture book fiction / general, I have two categories based on where I am shelving those books. The first one is Classics – this is for Newberry, Caldecott books and others by the same authors and artists as well as the picture books listed in Sherry Early’s Picture Book Preschool Curriculum or Five in a Row. My picture book adaptations of Grimm’s or Anderson’s Fairy Tales are all housed under either Grimm, Anderson, or Mother Goose, in most cases (yes, I have some exceptions as I am still working through these books). I do organize my books alphabetically by author and then alphabetically by title. My second main category in picture books is for all of my other general picture book fiction and they will primarily be stored in my plastic file crates in alphabetical order by author and then by title.
Currently my nonfiction picture book biographies are all housed on a couple of shelves out in my history room, eventually, alphabetically by the person, unless I decide to incorporate those with my other biographies of those same persons. Here is my aesthetic issue – most picture books are a taller format than regular sized biographies, and so I can shelve the picture books in one location and get more biographies shelved in a different location, but that may change.
Many of my picture book nature / science books are in my science section, but some are not. So, here is how I help myself to remember, until I get my call numbers all organized, or for a patron looking up, on my database or on my other options. If I have a book that is housed with what I consider my non-fiction books, such as science, history, or literature, then I tag it first as: Nonfiction, US History, Biography, Picture Book, Martin Luther King, Jr. or, Nonfiction, Life Science, Birds, Picture Book, Raptors, Birds of Prey, Falcons, Peregrine Falcon, Skyscrapers, Cities, etc. These tags are the ones I chose for the science picture book Falcons Nest on Skyscrapers by Priscilla Belz Jenkins. I put my picture book notation later in my order listing. If I have a book that I consider to be a fictional science / nature story, but I have it housed with the other nonfiction science books then I would show something similar in my tag listing, with Nonfiction, Nature Study, Seasons, Autumn, Fall, Fiction, and then more specific topics that are notated in the book. This tagging procedure helps me keep track of where my books go, but it is also for my plans to have my database more easily searchable and help my patrons recognize where my books are located whether I use Dewey Decimal numbers or not. I have a separate field for my book series in my database, but you may also put it in your tag listings. I have the separate subject fields in my database, as well as the sub-sort fields, so that I can utilize my search engine capabilities better in my own personal database rather than just relying on another online source.
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