How does your library organise picture books?

[readingmakesmehappy]

Ours has recently moved from A-Z by author to bunging them all into the open shelves with absolutely no organisation at all. Apparently "it's too much work" to sort them, but now we can't find any of the books we want.
AIBU to think picture books should be sorted?

All libraries I know have them in those cube tray style things so you flip through the books.
It would be impossible to keep them in any order unfortunately.

@Needmorelego ours used to have those open trays sorted alphabetically. Obviously not perfectly within each letter, but at least you knew where to go to Emma Chichester Clark, or David McKee, or Jonny Duddle.

Ours are very vaguely in alphabetical order, but I suspect it would only last 5 minutes when faced with toddler rhyme time. I know our libraries are stretched for staff and sorting picture books doesn’t seem like the best use of their time. I quite enjoy looking through the options!

The thing with picture books is that little children (quite rightly) tend to love looking through them, pulling them out, putting them back anywhere. Keeping them organised would take a lot of staffing time and be somewhat fruitless.

They just dump them in the cube things. It's not too difficult to find what you're looking for though as they only have about 50-60 picture books. They're very definitely geared to a different demographic.

I think you're being unreasonable. Picture books are aimed at children. Children should be able to aimlessly flick through and put back without worrying over where it goes. Surely the joy of the library for young children is flicking through and finding all sorts of different books, rather than 'what you want'? Do young children even specifically know what they want? They enjoy looking at all of them. It's only as we get older we tend to look for specific authors.

I can understand your annoyance if it extends to children's chapter books, but I think this layout is the most appropriate for picture books aimed at under 7s.

I've only ever known the picture books to be displayed either in cubes or in wire racks, facing outwards. I've never known them to sort by author and can understand why your library have changed as that must have been a huge task to maintain, sorting it back after every child has visited and looked through. This way, it doesn't matter what goes where.

Just to add that each section should be aimed at it's target audience. It sounds like, until now, your library was looking to please parents by presenting them with tidy organised shelves where they can quickly grab all the Julia Donaldson books, which they know they will enjoy reading to their child (substitute author's name as necessary).

This way is much more catered to children, encouraging them to look through to choose which books they'd like to look at/borrow. Young children don't walk into a library and say "excuse me, where are all your Jill Murphy books?". They enjoy searching through to grab whatever catches their eye.

Picture books are in cubes, no order. Older child chapter books are on the shelves in alphabetical order.
How it should be in my opinion - it means I don’t have to hover over my 3 year old as she looks through them freely which is surely the joy of the library for a young child

In the cubes so children can flick through - young children choose their books by looking at the picture on the front rather than selecting by author.

Ours are all in cubes or those vertical shelf holder things, My toddler likes to pull every book off the shelf or out of the cube and have three at a time open on the floor with her, I put them all back when we're done but I am not going to be faffing putting them alphabetically