Books on Demand

Middle and Upper School Librarian Crystal Hamlin has found an innovative way to keep books moving on campus. Her method? Turning the traditional library on its head — and, occasionally, on a dime.

"I wanted to provide students a library browsing experience during a time when they aren't able to come browse as usual," Mrs. Hamlin said, describing her new mobile library service Books on Demand. Although Middle and Upper School students have more than 8,000 titles to choose from, the library serves as classroom space for the seventh and eighth grades and is currently closed to most traffic. Mrs. Hamlin took a cue from Shannon McClintock Miller, innovation director of instructional technology and library media at Van Meter Community School, and decided that in order to put books back into the hands of students, she would need to bring the library directly to them.

"I saw where [Mrs. Miller] had created something similar called Bookhub in her school," Mrs. Hamlin explained. "Bookhub lets students 'order' library books for on-campus delivery the way Grubhub delivers food. I imagined something along the lines of Amazon shopping but for library books, so I thought about how to use an online browsing experience that students are familiar with to help them locate and check out library materials."

Mrs. Hamlin launched Books on Demand in the third week of school, carting a selection of books to classrooms and other open spaces for students to browse through and check out. The cart makes its rounds at least twice a week during snack time, lunch, and study hall for both Middle and Upper School students, who sanitize their hands before touching the books. Materials are also quarantined for at least 72 hours once returned in keeping with guidelines from the Institute of Museum and Library and Library Services. And even though the number of books she travels with is substantially fewer than the library's full offering, Mrs. Hamlin has noticed a surprising outcome.

"The books being checked out and put on hold are not the ones you would expect," she said. "Students are browsing more and finding books they may not have heard of otherwise."

Finding those deep picks wouldn't be possible without the work Mrs. Hamlin put into revamping the school's LibGuides website. In addition to its expansive collection of learning and teaching resources, the online portal offers weekly reading recommendations, video book trailers, book reviews written by students, first-chapter readings by Mrs. Hamlin, and a link to the library's digital catalog, which students can search by subject or interest. All books are labeled with relevant topics — "I explain them as basically hashtags," Mrs. Hamlin said — that group similar titles. She also pulls usage data from the LibGuides website to restock the mobile cart with new and popular picks within the school.

"I've always had access to this data," Mrs. Hamlin said. "Now students can see it, too."

From Destiny Discover, the school's interactive catalog linked on LibGuides, students can place holds on books and have them delivered to their lockers, a feature enabled by Mrs. Hamlin's student assistant David Cantor '22. That means for many students, library "visits" are now a fully online experience. They can log on, view their account history, see what books are trending in the school, review past reads, and more.

Of course, this workaround isn't a replacement of the traditional library model, and Mrs. Hamlin looks forward to the day when students will be milling about the library again. For now, it provides a much needed service in a safe, creative way.

"It's definitely an interesting time to be a librarian," Mrs. Hamlin said with a smile.