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Collection Development Manual > Libraries & Collections > Central Library > Children

Children

The Children's collection contains materials for children from infancy to age fourteen. The bulk of the collection is made up of general fiction and nonfiction books, materials to promote early literacy skills, and reference materials for children's research and study needs.

The Children's Library is similar to a small neighborhood library. Unlike Central Library's adult materials, which can be found on all three floors, the entire collection of children's materials is located in one room. Books, movies, music, magazines, CD-ROMs, and curriculum kits are kept together to facilitate use of the collection by the intended audience.

The Children's collection at Central Library contains many resources that are not available elsewhere in the library system. Chief among these are reference collections of award-winning and Oregon-related books, and reference books on the history of children's literature, and children's authors and illustrators. The Children's collection also contains many older materials found only at Central Library, primarily folk and fairy tales, poetry and juvenile fiction. Reference materials supporting research about children's literature, children's readers' advisory and related subjects are also part of this collection.

The nonfiction materials in the Children's collection are extensive. The collection covers a broad range, including such diverse subjects as paleontology, computers, biographies, arts, folk and fairy tales, biology, transportation, costuming, language arts, agriculture, technology, and geography. The collection is evaluated often to make sure it is current and relevant to customers' needs, and to ensure that pertinent topics are purchased for children and adolescents when available.

Fiction in the Children's collection covers as many subjects and genres as possible, including award-winning fiction, classics, realistic fiction, humor, sports stories, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, short stories, beginning readers, and picture books. The picture book collection is also extensive and includes separate sections for toddler and concept books. Books for beginning readers (children who are starting to read on their own) are kept separately from the older juvenile fiction.

The Children's collection contains fiction and nonfiction materials in languages other than English. These materials are selected for children up to age 14, but adult language learners also utilize the collection. The focus is on fiction books rather than language learning. Picture dictionaries and bilingual books are included. The majority of the bilingual books in the Children's collection are picture books. Materials in Multnomah County Library's four target languages (Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Vietnamese) make up the majority of this part of the collection, though the Children's collection also includes a smaller selection of materials in French, German, Arabic, Japanese, and other languages. Spanish materials include audio books, movies and recorded music as well as books.

Some materials in the Children's collection are intended for adults to use together with children. The parenting collection contains books about topics adults want to read and use with children in order to give personal guidance. The collection is primarily for children under six years of age but is also intended for adults to use with children in early elementary grades who are not yet able to read independently. Examples of parenting topics are new babies, potty training, divorce, bullies, and death.

A portion of the Children's collection is devoted to audiovisual materials. Audio books are aimed primarily at elementary school-age children, although recordings for middle school students also can be found as well as book/cassette (or CD) sets for younger children. The majority of audio books in the Children's collection are fiction. Video recordings (in DVD and VHS format) are heavily used. Book-based films (animated and live action), children's TV shows, and children's feature films are available. Feature films are by far the most popular. Nonfiction video recordings include academic subjects and popular topics such as children's music, animals and transportation.

Children are the primary audience for the Children's collection, but it is also used by older teens, parents, teachers, and other interested adults.

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Older children may find additional items of interest in the Young Adult collection, or in the various subject collections in other parts of the library. At Central Library, the Fiction and Young Adult collections are kept in the Popular library on the first floor, and the nonfiction and Periodicals collections are on the second and third floors.