Just Wondering - Holiday Collections

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

This post by Manitowoc (WI) Public Library Youth Librarian and YSS Board Member Susie Menk explores questions about how we deal with the increasing number of books published on different cultural holidays and the issue of available - and appropriate shelving space. And she's wondering....what do you think? 

I know that summer is here and we are all scrambling to get last minute details nailed down for our summer reading programs.  But it’s never too early to look ahead to the holidays.  That’s our topic for today—what to do with your holiday books. 

First let me say that the concept of picture book city has taken this idea out of many libraries.  When libraries shifted to picture book city categorization many had a category called Holiday or Celebrations and they chose to put their holiday books in that section.  Some of us were not able to do that because of space concerns or non-movable shelving. 

My library has a beautiful rotunda in the second floor youth department.  However, the shelving in this space cannot be moved or changed in any way.  Since our picture books are located in this space, this left us with spacing concerns.  Prior to changing to picture book city cataloguing, we already had holiday books in a separate location.  When we decided to catalog our picture books in the picture book city format, we were already at full capacity in the rotunda.  There was no way to add in another whole collection.  

Our holiday collection consists of a general holiday section and then Jewish holidays followed by the main secular holidays in chronological order according to the calendar year.  First there is Valentine’s Day, then Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and finally Christmas.  Other holidays like Father’s Day, Veterans Day and Fourth of July just went into general holiday.  Each section has fiction and then non-fiction books and they are separated on the shelves according to holiday and each major holiday has a corresponding sticker on the book spine.  

Sounds like a workable system, right?  So what’s the issue?  The problem I am running into (and believe me, it’s a great problem to have) is that more picture books are being written depicting cultural or ethnic holidays.  I want to be able to give them a location that is fitting and respectful.  

So how do I go about doing that?   I really like the idea of having a picture book category called Celebrations, but the space and shelving constraints don’t allow that at this time.  If I were able to make a Celebrations category, which books would be placed there?  Can I add books on Diwali or the Japanese Star Festival?  What do I do with my general holiday books on Veterans Day or Memorial Day?  Do I make a distinction between secular holidays or festivals and celebrations that have a spiritual component?  How can I share these books that will guarantee they circulate and still be respectful of the celebration?  Do Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas fit in the secular area or are they more spiritual?  

I know that the space concerns are something we as a library will have to deal with eventually.  My biggest concern is finding a location and cataloguing procedure that will ensure that these diverse books get seen and circulated.  In the past, our holiday collection was toward the back of our department and it seemed like patrons had trouble finding it.  How can I make it more visible, more useful and get the books circulating?

What does your library do?  Do you have a separate collection for holidays?  How do you denote different holidays?