Friday, June 17, 2011
Genre-izing Fiction
The listservs I belong to have had many postings on making our school libraries as inviting as bookstores, one suggestion being to organize fiction books into genres. After much contemplation I took the plunge this year & genre-ized my fiction section.
When we suggest something different from what's always been, many question it's validity. But if we expect to survive in a changing world, we must be ready to try new things. If they don't work, we can always go back to the tried & true, but how will we know what's best if we don't experiment? One question always arises about a student’s ability to locate books in another library if we use some different organization method. Here's my justification:
HOW I DID IT
I already had genre stickers under the spine label on many books & wanted to continue that so my first task was to run bibliography reports by Subject, sorted by Call# so it was easy to go down the aisles & label the genre books. I did one genre at a time, beginning with Mystery (also mystery & detective stories). As time permitted--usually while shelving--I labeled all the mysteries on my list. Then I did Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Historical Fiction, Sports & Humor (also humorous stories). I decided to use a very cool new Scary label instead of Horror & I had to get a bit creative with the search terms (supernatural, good & evil) & with Romance (dating, relationships). Multiple subjects can get tricky--time travel was put in Fantasy or SciFi depending if it was magical or machine. Both my Sports & Humor sections have books pulled from all the other genres. I did have to go through the lists 2 or 3 times, but this method allowed me to continue circulating books throughout the semester. By the middle of December I was done identifying & stickering. Realistic Fiction books--about a third of my collection—are not stickered.
Nancy Limmer, West Memorial Junior High Librarian in Katy (TX) ISD wrote that she put Demco transparent color labels over the regular spine label & I decided that was the ideal solution--it wouldn't require changing anything on the book & labels could easily be removed if the next librarian decides not to be genre-ized. (In fact, during the process I could see that even without moving books into genre sections it was so much easier to see the different genres on the shelf by the colors of the spine labels, so you might consider this if you don't want to actually move books.) I had fun picking transparent label colors to coordinate with the Demco genre stickers—light green for Historical Fiction, light blue for Romance, dark blue for Adventure, red for Scary, pink for Fantasy, dark purple for Science Fiction, orange for Sports, yellow for Mystery, and tan for Humor. I tell students that "Blo-o-ody Red" is for Scary & "Peanut Butter" is for Humor because PB sticking to the roof of your mouth is funny.
I wanted an OPAC search to show the genre location of the book, so I needed to change the HomeLocation field to the appropriate genre. I pulled a few shelves of a single genre onto carts & did a global Home Location change, put on the transparent color labels, then returned books to the original shelves. It took only 3 days to do all the genres & it was pretty cool to walk down the aisles at the end of the week & see all the colorful shelves.
Once I had the HLs changed I ran a Count Items by Home Location report to see how many books I had in each genre in order to determine the number of shelves needed for each genre. Over our winter break I used the counts & an Excel map of my shelving until I had created a layout I liked. The first 2 days of school in January I moved books into their genre location & created new signage to coordinate with the genre colors. Classes began coming in for a genre lesson & book checkout on Thursday & the change was a big hit with students. In fact, my circulation numbers increased 50% over last year, most of it during the second semester because students can quickly find multiple books in their favorite genre without a lot of wandering around the aisles! I got so excited I ordered new Demco bookends & bright-colored carts to coordinate with the genre colors. I do love Demco!
When we suggest something different from what's always been, many question it's validity. But if we expect to survive in a changing world, we must be ready to try new things. If they don't work, we can always go back to the tried & true, but how will we know what's best if we don't experiment? One question always arises about a student’s ability to locate books in another library if we use some different organization method. Here's my justification:
- I believe the main purpose of the school library is to support the curriculum. Our state's new ELA standards stress genres & our teachers especially focus on fiction genres, so I need to support that as well as I can. If my kids learn about fiction genres in their classes, then that is what they look for as they choose literature, regardless of where they are. Children live what they learn.
- Students who are smart enough to get into college are also smart enough to figure out the system of organizing that library (most of them use LC anyway, which is certainly different than DDC). Non-college students will use the public library (and many public libraries are genre-izing now) or the bookstore where things are already by genre. People are adaptable--that's one of the things they become as they progress through school!
- Libraries have been around since Alexandria yet it wasn't until the late 1800s that DDC & LC provided a universal organizing structure. Even DDC isn't carved in stone--if we went strictly by DDC, we wouldn't have a separate fiction section at all!
HOW I DID IT
I already had genre stickers under the spine label on many books & wanted to continue that so my first task was to run bibliography reports by Subject, sorted by Call# so it was easy to go down the aisles & label the genre books. I did one genre at a time, beginning with Mystery (also mystery & detective stories). As time permitted--usually while shelving--I labeled all the mysteries on my list. Then I did Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Historical Fiction, Sports & Humor (also humorous stories). I decided to use a very cool new Scary label instead of Horror & I had to get a bit creative with the search terms (supernatural, good & evil) & with Romance (dating, relationships). Multiple subjects can get tricky--time travel was put in Fantasy or SciFi depending if it was magical or machine. Both my Sports & Humor sections have books pulled from all the other genres. I did have to go through the lists 2 or 3 times, but this method allowed me to continue circulating books throughout the semester. By the middle of December I was done identifying & stickering. Realistic Fiction books--about a third of my collection—are not stickered.
Nancy Limmer, West Memorial Junior High Librarian in Katy (TX) ISD wrote that she put Demco transparent color labels over the regular spine label & I decided that was the ideal solution--it wouldn't require changing anything on the book & labels could easily be removed if the next librarian decides not to be genre-ized. (In fact, during the process I could see that even without moving books into genre sections it was so much easier to see the different genres on the shelf by the colors of the spine labels, so you might consider this if you don't want to actually move books.) I had fun picking transparent label colors to coordinate with the Demco genre stickers—light green for Historical Fiction, light blue for Romance, dark blue for Adventure, red for Scary, pink for Fantasy, dark purple for Science Fiction, orange for Sports, yellow for Mystery, and tan for Humor. I tell students that "Blo-o-ody Red" is for Scary & "Peanut Butter" is for Humor because PB sticking to the roof of your mouth is funny.
I wanted an OPAC search to show the genre location of the book, so I needed to change the HomeLocation field to the appropriate genre. I pulled a few shelves of a single genre onto carts & did a global Home Location change, put on the transparent color labels, then returned books to the original shelves. It took only 3 days to do all the genres & it was pretty cool to walk down the aisles at the end of the week & see all the colorful shelves.
Once I had the HLs changed I ran a Count Items by Home Location report to see how many books I had in each genre in order to determine the number of shelves needed for each genre. Over our winter break I used the counts & an Excel map of my shelving until I had created a layout I liked. The first 2 days of school in January I moved books into their genre location & created new signage to coordinate with the genre colors. Classes began coming in for a genre lesson & book checkout on Thursday & the change was a big hit with students. In fact, my circulation numbers increased 50% over last year, most of it during the second semester because students can quickly find multiple books in their favorite genre without a lot of wandering around the aisles! I got so excited I ordered new Demco bookends & bright-colored carts to coordinate with the genre colors. I do love Demco!
