Organizing a homeschool lending library

[mamakelly]

Our city has a homeschool lending library, that has been passed around to several different churches. My friends church has now been gifted the enormous lending library. They are going to make it permanently housed at their church. She's having trouble deciding exactly how to sort the books, she said it's not sorted at all! If you had access to a homeschool book lending library, how would it be most helpful for it to be sorted?

Edited May 10, 2016 by mamakelly

[Carol in Cal.]

I'd do it like the public library, using the Dewey Decimal System, except that I would have a separate section for curricula, organized by subject, like writing, math, reading, etc.

[mamakelly]

It's my understand that it is all curriculum, so I was thinking that a typical library system wouldn't work.

[happi duck]

That's cool!

 

I think it depends on what type of materials they have.

 

My first thought was by subject and within each subject by level...with separate sections for games, puzzles and things like microscopes.

 

If there are a lot of general books, I agree with Carol about Dewey.

 

Eta: missed the additional information!

Edited May 10, 2016 by happi duck

[Tita Gidge]

I'd prefer it like a bookstore: by subject.  So, SCIENCE ... LANG ARTS ... MATH ... HOW-TO/SUPPORT BOOKS ... BOX/ALL-IN-ONE

Within each subject would be each curricula/publisher, loosely separateby general or typical age of use (if necessary; e.g., ELEM / MS / HIGH / ALL)

 

I think the one exception would be a PRE-K / K section. 

[HomeAgain]

Sort of did this...I made a google doc spreadsheet series, where each piece could be entered and catalogued into genres.  For example, HISTORY had

GENERAL RESOURCES

ANCIENTS

-PRE-HISTORY

-MESOPOTAMIA

-EGYPT

.......

 

And so on.  Science was broken down into the main branches, Language Arts into its branches..and then sorted by age level, with several blocks on each line detailing publisher, age range, etc.  Online, everyone had access to view what was there, (each item also was labeled/coded for curriculum, supplement, dvd, manipulative..) and each bookcase in person was set up for each subject, books/media on top, manipulatives down below.  Keeping it connected to the web helped to see what was checked out instead of looking for lost items.

[heartlikealion]

For misc. children's books I'd like it by approx reading level. I know, I know, different books do levels differently. But if the book has a big fat 2 stamped on the front, then I'd put it with the level 2 readers. If it didn't have anything on the front, I'd find out approx. what age/grade or not pinpoint an exact age/grade but have a range. Might look at Amazon or common sense media for ideas on where to sort it.

 

For things like math workbooks or such, I guess sort by subject and then within each subject it could be sorted by grade.

 

A homeschool lending library sounds amazing.

 

 

[Erica in OR]

However it gets sorted, a huge benefit for me would be a way to search for titles or terms digitally. That might be too much for the start of the project if it doesn't exist already, but a future goal? It helps to know if a location has a specific title I'm looking for, rather than going and physically browsing books.

 

Erica in OR

[ThursdayNext]

However it gets sorted, a huge benefit for me would be a way to search for titles or terms digitally. That might be too much for the start of the project if it doesn't exist already, but a future goal? It helps to know if a location has a specific title I'm looking for, rather than going and physically browsing books.

 

Erica in OR

LibraryThing is a relatively inexpensive way to catalog home or small libraries. I bet there are other systems out there too.

[Lara in Colo]

by topic, then age

American history---Elem, Middle , HS

Grammar-- Elem, middle HS

Math---Elem, Middle HS

 

Readers by subject -- not really broken up by age--unless there are REALLY a lot of them
 

Then have it entered into Library thing so everyone can have access from home--- LT also will allow several different ways to search if you add different tags--- so for instance one book could have tags like---History, American, elem, Sonlight,
I have a lending library in my home and I use Library thing to help keep track of who has my books-- I just add the person's name as a tag and then I can do a search by their name and find a list of all they checked out---I am sure LT has a better way, but this is how I do it