“Genrefying” the Fiction Section

At the end of the school year, we undertook a huge project in the FES Library. We re-organized the fiction collection on the 2nd floor by genre. The reason we made the change is because we noticed how often students and teachers ask for fiction by genre. Much of this is due to the 5th grade’s 40 Book Challenge (inspired by Donalyn Miller). Students are more apt to browse for new books by genre than by author’s last name.

Here’s how we reorganized the fiction section by genre:

1) Mrs. Sparks and I visited Mrs. Becksvoort at the Falmouth Middle School. Mrs. B.  has organized the fiction section by genre for many years, and she had some excellent advice for us before we started the project.

2) I read blog posts by other librarians who had recently “genrefied” their libraries.

 

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3) I also posted a query on Twitter and received some great advice.

4) Categories: Next I had to decide which genres would be represented. In the end I decided on these genres, and I added in a couple of themes (humor & sports).

Adventure
Fantasy
Historical Fiction

Humor
Mystery
Realistic Fiction
Science Fiction
Sports
Suspense

5) Stickers! I ordered genre labels from Demco. Whenever I had  5 or 10 minutes between classes, I would sit in the fiction section and add spine stickers to the books. I miscalculated the number of spine label protectors we would need for the project, and I had to order more during summer vacation.

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6) Once we were done circulating books in June, we pulled every fiction book off the shelf in the 2nd floor of the library. Mrs. Sparks and I piled the books by genre.

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7) Editing the record in the library catalog- With the help of our faithful library volunteer, Sheila McGarr, Mrs. Sparks scanned each book and changed the call number in the online catalog by adding the genre abbreviation to the end.

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8) Once the books were changed in the catalog, we re-shelved them by genre.

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9) The final step was creating new genre signs and a genre abbreviation chart.

I predict this will increase the circulation of many fiction titles especially in sections like historical fiction and science fiction. We’ll know in a few weeks when the students return to school.

 

2 thoughts on ““Genrefying” the Fiction Section

  1. Question: what did you do with the books that just didn’t seem to fit any category? Do you have updated pictures and were there other problems that you encountered?

  2. Great question. I found several titles that didn’t seem to fit any of the genres I had identified; they weren’t realistic fiction and they weren’t fantasy. That’s when I realized I needed to add a “Suspense” category. I set aside books that stumped me. Later I went back and made decisions based on reviews from Kirkus and SLJ.

    The biggest problem I ran into was figuring out where to put books that fit more than one genre. For example, a mystery book with fantasy elements. I made decisions keeping in mind that they can be moved later on and knowing that my goal is to get the books into the hands of children.

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