Children's collection

I'm a retired librarian, with cataloging experience, and have been asked to help organize the children's collection in our church library. Someone had already applied detailed Dewey Decimal Classification call numbers to about half of the books. Long story short, after talking with the children's minister, we're considering an alternate classification system that would be easier to browse and shelve. I'm wondering if anyone has come up with their own system, particularly for children's books. For example, O.T. (Old Testament) RUTH (Book of the Bible) Storr (Author's last name). What about a classification for famous bible stories such as Creation, Noah's Ark, Jonah and the great fish, or famous bible figures such as Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David, etc. -- separate categories in Old and New Testaments for Biography? We're also interested in classifications for the disciples, parables, miracles, heaven, prayer, the Holy Spirit, etc. I realize that these can be identified through subject headings and tags, but we're hoping to group the books together. I don't want to re-invent the wheel if someone already has a classification system they'd be willing to share. Thank you.

We organized the children's books first by reading level and depth of the contents first (preschool, lower school, middle school high school) then by book contents. The book categories after that were far more general than you are describing: Biography, Current Issues, Prayer, Jesus, Bible Stories (including Noah's Ark, miracles). Christmas and Easter had enough books too warrant their grouping. Sadly, this classification was very labor intensive. I am thinking of going beck to the Dewey numbers, frankly and sort those by reading level.

You might consider simplifying Dewey--maybe limiting all numbers to three digits (no decimals). It would give you some of the advantage of Dewey's ready-made organization without being very complicated.

My wife and I are in the process of revamping our church library. The children's books were all labeled "CE" along with the first three letters of the author's last name - but there was no organization at all. We went through the books and saw some pretty obvious categories. We decided to divide the books into the categories below and then we added a colored dot sticker to the back of each book in each category. We also are going to add labels to the shelves with the category name + the colored dot sticker. Adding the sticker would allow kids and librarians re-shelve the books in the right category pretty quickly. Librarians would ideally organize the books by color/category + author.

Categories + Sticker Colors
BIOGRAPHY (BLUE)
MISSIONS (GREEN)
BIBLE STORIES (RED)
THEOLOGY & TOPICS (ORANGE)
CHRISTIAN STORYBOOKS (PURPLE)
GENERAL STORYBOOKS (YELLOW)
REFERENCE BOOKS (BROWN)
SPANISH (PINK)

Furthermore, I've used my "Collections" option to point patrons to the right shelf when they search in TinyCat (i.e., http://bit.ly/2jh8l4c)

We think it will be a better system than was there before. But we're kind of new at this, so who knows.

In our library I started with the Dewey system, with T in front of 6-12 grade books and J in front of elementary books. Then first three letters of the author's last name under it. However, the elementary books didn't stay organized and the kids couldn't find things very easily. Now I changed the Juvenile books to topics with colored stickers instead of the call number. I looked at what topics we have a lot of and where we needed to grow and came up with the topics. Here are the topics: Bibles/doctrine, Trinity (talked about individually or separately), Creation, Adventure/missions/faith(this includes adventures in the Bible), Heaven/Angels, Prayer, Celebrations/Holidays (lots of Christmas and Easter), and Life Together. I also added a I Can Read section for our emerging readers because the books are so skinny and were hard for them to find. The schools in our area use the Accelerator Reader program, so I put the reading level, and other information, on the inside cover like the schools do. Now the kids can find and return any book they choose fairly easily.

We are hoping to update our kids section as it is mostly really old books. i'm not sure if I should update the classification system as well. Right now we are using very simplified Dewey system with CF and CNF with the author's first three initials for the kids section, but I actually shelve the storybooks separately from the chapter books. This works because of the small amount of books, but we might have to change if we get a lot more books.

For our picture books we use color coding with different colors for old testament, new testament, prayer, creation, and missions. It makes it easy to reshelve and yet creates a semblance of order. We had a reading promotion when we first introduced it with Joseph's coat of many colors. The children were to read a book from each category to color a stripe on Joseph's coat - and when completed they were able to choose a prize from the prize box.

We have broad categories with color coding for picture books: OT, NT, Prayers, About God, Christmas, Easter, Other Religions, Grief. Our library is small so each section uses only part of a 36 inch shelf.

The color for grief is used throughout the collection including adult since books can fall into different Dewey numbers.

Our general picture books are more numerous and separated into toddler, preschool and K, and older elementary based on wordiness and complexity of the story. Chapter books are grouped separately (it's a small collection) and children's nonfiction has Dewey numbers.

Recent titles are important for children, I think. Our children's section has fewer than 15% titles that were collected more than 20 years ago. About 80% of the general picture books can be linked to a revised common lectionary passage, although they are worthwhile reads in their own right. The lectionary links are charted separately and don't figure into the classification, but that's where we note topics such as Trinity, mission, etc.