A driving force of my professional goals this year has been increasing the accessibility of the library space; as a result, I have devoted a lot of my energy and attention this year to focusing on refreshing the look and feel of the library to make it more inclusive, accessible, appealing, and user-friendly to students. The artifacts below exemplify some of my efforts to achieve this goal.

While a thoughtfully curated library collection may be the most essential component to cultivating students' love of literature, an inclusive and accessible library space is arguably the second most essential component, as an environment that feels welcoming and easily navigable will encourage students to visit the library often and make use of its resources.

In order to refresh the Fox Meadow library and make it a more inclusive, accessible, and welcoming space, I have done the following:

1.  removed extraneous furniture,

2. rearranged seating,

3. relabeled and reorganized the Young Reader section,

4. created new wayfinding signs, using the 7 Principles of Universal Design to increase accessibility and inclusiveness,

5. designed displays to highlight a variety of books.

The two sections below, Accessible Wayfinding Signs and Before and After Images, highlight some of the significant changes I've made to the library space this year.  

In order to make the wayfinding signs in the library more accessible to and inclusive of all students, I created new signs on Canva, following Principle 4: Perceptible Information, of the 7 Principles of Universal Design.  The signs are color-coded to match the color-coded spine labels of books in each section, and they also use Verdana, a font that is considered to be a "highly accessible" font for Universal Design. I also changed the name of what was formerly the "Easy Readers" section to "Everybody Readers," as it is more inclusive of the wide grade range of students who borrow from this section, including ENL students and emergent readers.

Another important component to creating a warm, welcoming atmosphere in the library where students feel valued is displaying student work. At various points in the year, student work, based on literature we read in class, has been displayed in different places throughout the library, as a way to provide students with a sense of shared ownership over the library space.

For a school library to truly be the heart of the school, students and teachers must be made to feel that the library is a place that reflects their reading interests and respects their opinions and ideas. In order for students and teachers to have a place to express their voice and choice, I have placed a clipboard with a book suggestion sheet on the circulation desk, and students and teachers are encouraged to write down their suggestions for the library collection. Students have enthusiastically embraced the suggestion sheet, displaying a wide range of reading interests and revealing where they may need help finding existing items in the library (as, for example, indicated by the repeated suggestion to add Harry Potter to the library, which is already on the shelves); the result has been an increase in excitement about the library, as some of the suggestions, after I've carefully vetted them, have been added to the collection and have been in almost constant circulation since their addition.