Librarians across the country are reorganizing their fiction collections. You heard right, no more searching for books by solely by authors last name (even in the genre shelving system authors last names are needed within each genre) and no more "Can you help me find a mystery book?" questions from students.
Becky Jackson a school librarian at New Providence Middle School located in Clarksville, Tennessee made the switch to the genre shelving system and shared her experience in the article "Genre Shelving: Why and How I Made the Leap". In her article she admits when she first learned about genre shelving she hated the idea, but after starting a new job in a middle school library she began to get questions, "Students in grades six to eight come in and ask, 'Where are the scary books?' I would direct the to a specific author. Or, 'Where are the mystery books?' again, I direct them to a specific author.". It is easy to understand that after being asked these sorts of questions over and over Jackson began to rethink her position on genre shelving.
Sounds reasonable so far, so why aren't more librarians rushing to change their libraries around and help the students locate books they want to read easily and independently? Well the answer to that is a simple one, it takes a ton of PLANNING and TIME to completely change shelving systems. Here is a list of just a few of the things that have to be done:
- Decide which genre categories the library will feature
- Pull ALL...yes I said all... of the fiction books off the shelves
- Determine what genre EACH book fits in (you will be physically touching each of the books in your library!)
- Relabeling EACH of the books! (this probably means more stickers on the spines of the books)
- Changing EACH books entry in your catalog system
- Placing ALL of the books back on their shelves in their new sections
- Advertising and educating the students on the new system
So this isn't something that can just be done overnight...or a weekend...or spring break....maybe it can be done over the summer.
The lovely librarian ladies over at The Librarian Way made a fun video discussing reasons why genre shelving might work for you or why it may not be something your library would benefit from. Take a look!
Another great resource to look at if you're thinking genre shelving may be something that you're interested in is an article from the Nation Library of New Zealand that offers an in depth breakdown of the positive and negative sides of having a library organized by genre.
Personally, I think it all depends on what would work best for the population that you serve. You really have to consider your population and their needs before making the switch. If I was in a school similar to Becky Jackson then I believe I would put in the time and effort to make the library more accessible to the students. However, if you are in a library where students generally come in looking for books by a favorite author or by word of mouth suggestions, like one of the girls in the video points out, then I would leave my shelves the traditional way!
It's all about making the library a positive experience for our patrons!
References
Jackman, B. (2014). GENRE SHELVING: WHY AND HOW I MADE THE LEAP. Library Media Connection, 32(5), 22.
Great post, Tatum! Your point about needing to know your patrons is key. And just the thought of the items you listed as parts of the process makes my head spin! As far as doing this myself, I can see benefits to it for sure. However, there is something nice about the simplicity of how things are now. Definitely not a Year One or Year Two task on my list. Curious about what others feel on this topic. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI have been soundly against shelving by genre since I first saw it. I still am, but your post showed me why some librarians make the choice to do so. I can honestly say that I would never do this in my future library, but if I walked into a school where the previous librarian had already done this process, I would have to think long and hard before changing it back.
ReplyDeleteI think I still like the idea of students having to do it "the old fashioned way". I like the possibility that they will bump into a book that is new to them on their search for a familiar title or author. I also think there is great value in teaching the students how to use the online library catalog. If my students were to type in "scary" or "mystery", they would have pages and pages of books from which to choose. The public library in our county is not "generified" nor is it likely that their college library will be organized this way either. Also, I will say that as a classroom teacher, I had my classroom library organized by genre (it WAS a lot of work) which did work well for my kids, but as the organizer, I had a very difficult time choosing a genre for many books that I felt could have easily fit into more than one section.
ReplyDeleteThe "Type A" organized side of me totally loves the idea of genrifying the books, but more of me likes it the way it has always been.
I LOVE the idea of genre-shelving as it is something unique and fun. And I could see where kids would explore new authors more often in genre-setting than traditional shelving. It would be hard to know where to place some books that could easily fit into multiple genres, but I like the idea. Maybe even having a sign at each genre not only announcing it, but listing some popular titles/authors within could be helpful for kids (or at least for you so you don't have to answer that question all throughout the day).
ReplyDeleteBut if not doing genre-shelving, I do like the idea of doing labels to help connect students to similar books (just not with just color labels...right EJP?!). It's a neat dilemma, and a nice break from all the technology stuff right?!
I, also, love the idea of genre-shelving, and I think about it every time I have to answer the questions "Where are the scary books?", "Where are the romance books?", "Where can I find sports books?". I typically have authors in mind that I direct students to in this situation because of course in my traditional setup those books are all over the place. You mentioned about the girls talking about students coming in and asking for a specific author, but in my experience, I have found that the most popular authors have a tendency to write in the same or close to the same genre. Therefore, I don't think that author specific or word of mouth would be a problem in a genre-shelved fiction section. Maybe I could start with the labels and eventually transition into genre specific sections....hmmm.
ReplyDelete