Our library has been very generous to the local homeschoolers.  We have been designated “Special Community” status which means we can have our books for a month plus our quota of books has been upped from 4 to 10 each person.  This means we have the potential to have 60 books in our house at any one time.

That is 60 books belonging to the library, above and beyond any books that we own (and who is counting those!!)  With this many books in the house we definitely need a system in order to keep track of them all.

We have a bookshelf that was initially bought to store our library books on but it has become “the reading shelf”.  Each child has their own shelf where they store their library books and the books they have in their mind to read, or are reading.

Sometimes these shelves get overloaded and we need to have a serious tweak.  Are we finished with a book?  Are we really going to read it?  We need to make realistic goals and for a book loving family thinking you are going to get around to reading a book is a sure way of adding clutter to your life.

After each visit I ask the librarians to print out a list of all the books borrowed.  We pin this up on a message board so it is easy to find.  We use this list as a check list to ensure we are returning all the books that need to.

Actually the returning books is the one glitch in the system.  We need to find a place for a box where we can place “ready to return” books so that whenver and whoever goes to town can return our books for us.  I’ll have to work on this aspect!

What do you have happening in your home to help you manage your library books?