An Online Solution to Organizing Classroom Libraries!

Is your classroom library beautifully put together... Organized in cute baskets by genre', topics, levels, etc.?  Maybe alphabetically? On the surface, my library always looked pretty decent.  But I always had a difficult time keeping track of what books I had along with all the books coming and going.  Over the years, I lost many good books.  Maybe I lack organization, or maybe it's just a common thing when you have a classroom library where students are constantly checking out books.  I did have a checkout system, but still lost books nonetheless.  I believe I have found a solution to this problem!!!

To fully tell this story, I must take you back to the moment when I looked into my office/book room for the first time.  Stunned, I found that it was overtaken by a sea of both organized and unorganized books.

  Quite overwhelming to say the least.  Click here to see more pictures of what it looked like at first.  Now, I have to give credit where credit is due.  My new coworker Brandi spent many hours organizing those books on the shelves.  I can only imagine what it looked like when she first started!  If you ever read this Brandi, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! :)

In order to put my office section together, the book organization needed to be completed (which is still unfinished at the time :'( ).  At first I stood there dumbfounded... completely at a lost.  Then I dove in.  The baskets, in the pic above, contain multiple copies of books by level to be used in guided reading.  So my main goal was determine which books had enough copies to add as guided reading sets.

Now, at look glimpse of what it looked like after I dove in.

Pretty scary huh??  It actually looked worse.  I know right!!!  I only thought to take a picture after I had already organized some.  If you want to know what it looked like at its worst, imagine a tiny circular spot in the center of the room where a person could sit and then books/boxes covering every other spot on the carpet.  Yep... that bad. lol

Now this all had to be told for you to fully understand the relief and excitement I felt when good ole' Brandi came by for a visit and introduced me to Booksource's Classroom Organizer.  It was as if Heaven had opened up it's doors and shined down upon me!  Although I am not yet finished, I made so much progress.  I only have a few boxes left.  :)

You might have seen this resource on Pinterest.  That super hero on the pic, along with Brandi, saved the day for me! :)

You have to check out this site!!  It is free!!  You can scan in the books (if your school has one on hand) or type in the isbn number.  Whalaa your books are in the system.  You can enter your students in (which I haven't played around with) and then they can check out online!  Isn't it amazing!!!

THIS WAS TOO GOOD NOT TO SHARE!!