I just got a job as a fifth grade teacher and am excited to get the keys to my room soon. :) Until then I have been working on things at home to get ready for the school year. One thing I knew I would need no matter where I end up is a classroom library.
I recently had several books given to me and will be getting more from family soon. (Yay for retired teachers in my family!) I have been searching the internet for ways to organize my library and have several ideas but haven't decided just yet what I will do. In my search, however, I did find a way to help me keep track of what I do have. Since almost all of the books were given to me, I honestly don't know half of the books that I have.
The app is called BookBuddy.
The app lets you scan the bar codes for any book that you own, some of the books will have to use the barcode in the front cover, and add them to your library. Most of my books were recognized by the app but many Scholastic books ordered from the catalogue don't have bar codes unfortunately. I was able to find most of them via the search online tool. Or you can add books manually. Can you say class books?
Once the book has been scanned, you can rate it, add your class list so you know who has borrowed it, or you can add a tag. Tags can be anything you want; animals, humor, holidays, first day of school, you name it. Later when you're planning lessons, you can go to the app and search the title or tag you need for your lesson.
As you add more books, they are then organized by title, author, category, rating, whatever you want.
You can also see who has loaned out what, what series you have, or tags you've added. You can also create categories. Once I have decided how I want to organize my library I think I will make my baskets into categories and organize them on the app accordingly.
Lastly there is a wish list. I am always finding books I would love in my classroom but unfortunately if I bought all of them when I saw them I would be broke in a matter of days. This is a good way to keep track of them for when I do have a little extra money or a few scholastic points.
In case anyone is wondering, yet I bought BookBuddyPro. It was a little pricy, $4.99. Crazy for an app I know but being a first year teacher, my library will continue growing for quite some time and the free apps just won't cut it. I did do a lot of research before buying and this was the best option for what I was wanting it to do.
If you use BookBuddy and know of anything I forgot or haven't found yet, please let me know!
