How to set up a school library?
Schools have a great role in educating our youth that is why we always try to raise awareness on how to increase their quality and try to help schools to provide the best learning experience for their students. Today we shall discuss how a school can establish a library in their facility that provides their students with the best reading experience and allow them to learn and read about their passions. We will walk you through how to plan the library, how to create an inviting space, and how to pick the books in the library.
Keep on reading to know more.
How can you plan strategically for your school library?
Before making any space in your school you will need to do some planning to reach your goal and benefit from it extensively. That is why you will need to plan for your library to get the best results.
Here are some questions you will need to answer before starting:
1- What kind of library do you want to create and how will you be using it?
By that, we mean what will you be using the library for; will you be giving reading classes, will your students be using it for researching and doing self-studying sessions for an assignment or school projects, etc. All of this will affect many aspects when preparing and furnishing the library. But on a general note; make sure to provide the variety for all of your goals and the flexibility in case of discovering a new need.
2- What age group will be using it?
This is an important question that will help you in planning the library for instance answering this question will help you figure out the books you will be adding to your library and the furniture size you will be needing. In case you are targeting different age groups you will need to think about giving different options (furniture, books, spaces) for each age group that will be suitable for different usages.
3- What kind of resources will you need?
It might be an obvious answer but use this question to arrange your needed resources and prioritize them to know what are the most important and what has a replacement.
School library furniture:
Now that you have a general idea about your school library, you need to pick suitable furniture,
When you get into the process of picking furniture, the first thing that comes to your mind is how will you organize your library, here are a few options from our previous works to get inspired from.
Basically, you will need to provide chairs and tables and you can also add puffs to add a comfy reading area that could be used for storytelling classes and for those who would enjoy using it over the regular chair and table combo.
When buying furniture there are a lot of furniture pieces that could add a unique element to your library and help you design your library efficiently here are some examples:
3- Art library
4- Book rack
5- Book rack with divided shelves
6- Rose table
How to set up a school library?
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The layout of your library:
Now that you know the furniture you will be getting and the space you will be using, you can start designing the layout. This is a quite simple step just make sure to provide different spaces for different purposes and to give options for the students. You will also need to think about the use of the furniture and make enough space around it for easy access with no disturbance to others.
Now how do you encourage students in the school library?
Creating a school library is one thing and making it inviting and welcoming for students is another thing. So take the extra mile and go one more step further to give this library a sense of home that encourage the students to go there more often. Here are a few tips and tricks to do so:
1- First of all as we have mentioned before make it comfy so your students don’t overwhelmed with everything going on. Add some cushions and comfy seating places so they could enjoy reading in a resting position.
2- Secondly, you can add personalized characteristics to the space for instance; try to make it colorful and divide the seating areas based on some of the popular interests of the kids for instance you can name seating areas as professions (astronauts, police officers, teachers, etc).
3- Thirdly, make a space for a group activity. Design a space for group activities this will give your students some sense of community and help them to feel like they belong to the place.
How to arrange the books in the school library:
The most important thing in a library is the data it offers to its visitors. That is why you need to offer different forms and different ways and materials. You will need to add books, magazines, online resources, and other forms of materials that will help the students to reach the knowledge they need easily.
In order to ease the process even further you will need to arrange these materials in a way that could help students reach the books they need fastly and in a convenient way. The most popular and straight forward way to arrange the data is through categories you can first categorize them into books and digital data forms, then categorize those more into the regular library sections (drama, science, history, psychology, geography, poetry, astrology, etc). Knowing where is each section will ease the process further more and will minimize the questions and the hustle of reaching the needed materials.
Lastly in order to make reaching the needed data and books more accessible for students you will need to provide helping staff to offer help for the students when needed and work to keep order in the library,
These are some of the tips and tricks to make your school library more attractive and appealing for the students and feels more comfortable and more homey. But there is always room for more, don’t settle for less contact us and get the best furniture for your school library and if there is any help needed we will be able to offer you a hand. Joy&Learn is a company specializing in furnishing educational and entertainment projects, we have a long experience in furnishing schools, preschools, universities, science labs, computer labs, theaters, kids areas, and more.
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