Whether you’ve spent a lot of time and care building your classroom library over the years or you’re just starting out, it probably felt unnerving to have everything grind to a halt because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, educators were faced with the challenges of not only teaching online but also getting books in the hands of students safely.

Now, months later, you may still be teaching remotely. Or you may be engaged in hybrid or in-person learning with social distancing measures in place. In any case, the goal of safely getting books to readers remains the same.    

Your classroom library was meant to provide kids with the literacy skills that will make them successful throughout their education. In fact, reading real books on printed pages has many benefits for kids that outweigh the advantages of using digital devices for reading. But how do you ensure little hands aren’t spreading germs when looking for their next great read?  

6 Reasons Why It’s Important for Kids to Read Real Books

Making books accessible during the pandemic takes a little extra work, but it must be done. And luckily, we’re here with some tips and an amazing tool that can change the way you’ve been handing out titles for the better. 

Booksource Classroom Changes the Game 

At Booksource, we’re dedicated to helping educators. Not only do we curate amazing book collections designed to meet the needs of all students, we also have a free online tool to organize them!  

Booksource Classroom makes it easy to maintain an online inventory of your classroom library books, track their whereabouts, discover ways to increase student engagement and even analyze your library for diversity.  

But best of all, you can set up class and student profiles to allow your kids to browse, select, return and review titles without ever having to visit your classroom library in person, eliminating the fear of spreading germs. 

6 Essential Tips for Organizing Your Classroom Library

Educators everywhere have been taking advantage and allowing students to check out books from the safety of their devices. They will then deliver books to the student’s desk or set up a pick-up time for families to come and trade for new titles. If you decide to do the latter, it’s important to ensure physical distancing is possible, require masks and consider a distribution bin so that books don’t have to be handed off directly.

You may wonder how to ensure books are ready to be redistributed once they are returned to you. Well, we’ve got that covered, too! 

Booksource Classroom’s Quarantine Feature 

In response to the pandemic and the requests we have received from Booksource Classroom users, we’ve introduced a brand new Booksource Classroom feature that allows you to set aside your books and track how long they’ve been in quarantine. 

Once you’ve logged into your Teacher Dashboard, select “Settings” from the left toolbar. Click on “Enable/Disable Preferences” and scroll down until you find “Returning Books.” You can then “Enable Automatic Quarantine for Books” and decide how long you would like your books to be quarantined. Don’t forget to click “Save Settings” when you’re done. 

To monitor quarantined books, you can head to “Checkouts/Returns” under “Library” in the left toolbar. All books checked back in by students will automatically show up in the “Quarantine” column, indicating that these books can be set aside in your physical classroom until the progress bar is complete. 

After the quarantine window, a book will automatically move from “Quarantine” to “Need Put Back” so that you know it is ready. You can also click and drag books from column to column if you would like to switch the status manually.

Just click the check mark after you put it back on your shelf, and it will be added back into your Booksource Classroom digital library for the next eager student! 

Package Your Books for Physical Distancing 

Now that you know how to use Booksource Classroom to safely maintain your classroom library during COVID-19, it’s time to give you one last parting tip.  

When you buy from Booksource, we can package your book order to help you easily follow physical distancing guidelines in your classroom. We know your time is limited. Let us do the work! Whether you buy a starter classroom library, curated collections or a custom title list, we can create bagged book sets for easy distribution to each of your students. In addition, set labels can be added and customized for each student/family. 

We also offer individually packaged Take Home Reading & Literacy Packs to help kids bridge the gap between home and school. Each contains a workbook, instructions for families, 4-5 high-interest titles and a sturdy plastic zip bag that can be easily disinfected before distributing to students. These packs can also be customized with different titles or to include more or fewer books per student. Whatever you need to easily and safely provide books to your readers, we are here to help. 

We know this school year has presented some unique challenges, so we hope these solutions will help you on the path to creating engaged, happy readers. 

Have you been quarantining the books from your classroom library? How is it working for you? Tell us in the comments below!