Library Picture Book Searches: A Lost Art?

Photo by Emily Sibbet via Flickr

Sometimes it just hits me how much my world has changed in the last few years.  This week I was preparing for a couple of sessions I was leading with Deb Frazier in our district's Summer Academy.  Looking at the list of participants I realized I needed a few more intermediate books for our audience.  Though I had quite a collection of picture books, I decided to stop by our local library to browse for a few new titles.

My time was limited so I quickly headed to the children's section of the library and started to look for picture books for intermediate teachers to use in their classrooms.  I looked.  And I looked.  And I read.  And I searched.  It was then that I realized how much my ways for discovering picture books had changed in the last few years.  It seemed I had forgotten how to search for books on rows of shelves with tightly packed - spine out - books.  Could it be that shelf searching has become a lost art?

How book searching has changed for me:

• I rarely go to the library without a list of books that have been recommended to me or titles I know.
• Friends, colleagues, and students recommend titles and authors they love.
• I find new picture books for my classroom following blogs like Katie DiCesare's:  Creative Literacy, Mary Lee Hahn & Franki Sibberson's:  A Year of Reading, Karen Terlecky & Bill Prosser's:  Literate Lives, Mandy Robek's:  Enjoy and Embrace Learning, Danielle Smith's:  There's A Book.
• I discover many new titles on Twitter from colleagues like @MrSchuReads @LiteracyDocent @MentorTexts @jmalphy @alybee930 @lorilovesbooks.
• Amazon thinks it knows me.....and it works sometimes.
• Booktrailers catch my attention and make me want to find out more about a book.
• Authors' websites and tweets often guide me to their latest releases or previous books I have not discovered.  
• ChoiceLiteracy articles send me searching for particular titles.

Standing in the library, looking around at the shelves of books shoved tightly together, I realized how much I have changed the way I find books.  Make no mistake, this is not a post to say we no longer need libraries.  I believe quite the opposite is true, and have campaigned to help restore funding in Ohio.  I love my library (libraries!).  I frequent the library often --- actually I frequent three libraries, but rarely do I sit among the shelves for hours to look for books.  Usually I find books online, place them in my library bookbag, and stop by to pick them up when they are available.  

Though I have fond memories of sitting in libraries among the shelves of picture books, I love the way I find books now.  It occurs to me that I am fortunate to have a grown a large community of readers who love to talk about books.  I'm thinking this is a change for the better.