Hanging out at Carlisle School

Ellen Brandt is a librarian at the Blanchard Middle School in Westford, MA
and a winner of the MSLA Web Seal of Excellence

On Friday,  February 26, 2016, Maya Bery and the Northeast Area MSLA hosted a very successful get together at the Carlisle School.  The focus of this “Local Events by Local Members”  was “Collections and Resources”.
8 school librarians gathered at the Carlisle School to discuss “Ditching Dewey,”  share ideas, tour an exemplary library (as it transitions to exemplary Learning Commons), socialize, and enjoy dinner together.
Maya described her experiences with re-organizing her nonfiction collection into genres and also with transitioning from Library to Learning Commons. She demoed a couple of new technologies; turning herself into a human Keyboard with a MaKey MaKey (courtesy of Watertown Free Public Library) and cruising our table with a programmable Bee-bot.

Maya Bery’s Non-Fiction Categories for Hacked Dewey
Books are organized by category then sub-category (alphabetized) and then by author’s last name. The Dewey Decimal Number remains on the spine label, even for new books. This is not an extensive list, but gives an idea of how things are organized.

Health

• Diseases
  
• Human Body
  
• Medicine
  

Science

• Biographies
  
• Space
  
• Physics
  
• Chemistry
  
• Experiments
  
• Technology*
  
• Engineering*
  

Math

Machines

• Biographies (Wright Brothers, Earhart)
  
• Cars/Trucks
  
• Planes
  
• Trains
  
• Robots
  

Animals

• Amphibians
  
• Farm
  
• Pets
  
• Sea Mammals
  
• Mammals
  
• Big Cats
  
• Reptiles
  
• Dinosaurs
  
• Endangered
  
• Rodents
  

Nature

• Weather
  
• Insects
  
• Earth (natural disasters, volcanoes, etc)
  
• Rocks/Minerals
  
• Gardening
  
• Plants
  
• Trees
  

World History

• Ancient civs
  

• Titanic
  
• Pirates
  
• Explorers
  
• WWI/WWII + Holocaust
  
• Biographies
  

USA

• Colonial Era
  
• Rev. War
  
• Biographies
  
• Geography
  
• Presidents
  
• Immigration
  
• Symbols
  
• Civil Rights
  

Holidays
Military
Religion

• Christianity
  
• Judaism
  
• Islam
  
• Hinduism
  
• Buddhism
  

World Languages

• French
  
• Spanish
  
• Chinese
  

People/Places - largely bios that don’t fit anywhere else
Countries/Cultures - continent/region (ex: Middle East) + country
ELA (English Language Arts - will be changed because term is confusing to kids)

• Fairy tales
  
  • Fractured
    
  • Cinderella
    
• Folktales
• Poetry
  
• Novels in Verse
  
• Biography
  
• Myth
  
• Legend
  
• Fables
  

Boredom Busters

• Fun Facts (World Record type books)
  
• Picture Puzzles (I Spy, Waldo)
  
• Video Games (Minecraft)
  

Sports
Strange/Spooky - ghosts, aliens, paranormal
Making/Creating

• Biography
  
• Art
  
• Drawing
  
• Music
  
• Film
  
• Dance
  
• Inventions
  
• Building
  
• Crafts
  
• Origami