Here we are at the start of a shiny new school year and I'm so excited to see our students when they visit the library for the first time this year! I can't wait to hear what they read this summer and to help them find new books to start off the school year.
New this year, the fiction section of our library has been "Genrefied". What this means is that books are grouped together according to what genre they are (i.e. realistic fiction, fantasy, mystery, etc). Many school libraries are rearranging the books in a similar way because it makes it easier for students to find the types of books that they are looking for. Here is an interesting article that talks about library genrefication:
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/51336/how-genrefication-makes-school-libraries-more-like-bookstores
WHY did I do this in our school library? Students are always asking "Where are the scary books?" or "Where are the funny books?". Most of us have certain genres that we prefer to read but it can be very difficult to weed through all of the books on the shelves to find them. Last spring, I had discussions in our library with students about if grouping the books by genre would make it easier for the students and they said definitely! So, I decided to take the plunge!
Here is how I did it (solo librarian):
I started by deciding on the sections that I wanted and placing genre stickers on the spines of the books. The genres that I chose were: realistic fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, mystery, humor, sports fiction, action & adventure, science fiction, scary, animal fiction, and verse novels (not really a genre, but something students ask for). I purchased genre labels from Demco and started placing them on during the school year but did the majority of it after the year ended. I decided to use genre stickers instead of colored label protectors because some of the tinted label protectors are not the easiest to see (the lighter colored ones are hard to see and the darker colored ones make it difficult to read the label underneath). To help determine which genre each book belongs in, I used the curricular tags in Follett's Titlewave. Of course, many books fall into more than one category so I had to think about where students would be most likely to look for them. This process took approximately 3.5 days.
The next step was to physically move the books and group them together. I didn't take all of the books off of the shelves at once. The first section was realistic fiction so I took off all of the books in the first two cases that were not realistic fiction and placed them in piles according to genre. Then, I went through and pulled all of the realistic fiction books from the rest of the shelves and put them in their new location. I continued with the second genre and worked in the same way until I reached the end. Since all of the books already had labels on them, this entire process took just one full day.
After that, the location of the books needed to be marked in Destiny. I created sublocations and copy categories for each genre. Then, I went through and scanned each book to put it into the correct location in Destiny. This took one full day. Follett created this very helpful document to assist libraries with this process.
The final step was to create signage to help students find what they are looking for. We already had alphabet shelf dividers (handmade from IKEA cardboard magazine holders) so I reused them by printing new genre signs to tape over the old alphabet. Finally, I created signs to put on top of the shelves as well.
After just the first two days of library, it is easy to see that students are already more independent at finding the books that they are looking for! Also, I am finding that an extra benefit of arranging books this way is that it is reinforcing what genres are. Overall, this will be a very positive change for our library.
Looking forward to another GREAT reading year at Harrison!
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