Non-fiction Genrefication
Learn how to genrefy your nonfiction section in your school library
It’s safe to say I felt comfortable hopping on the Genrefication train the second I got to middle school and did a very successful transition for my fiction section my first year there. Click here to read about it. But when it came to my nonfiction section, I was stumped. A lot of other librarians that have genrefied their entire collections talked about pairing your nonfiction with your fiction so for example if I have a Sports section in Fiction, I could pair it with my 796 collection, which sounds amazing and definitely easy for the kids to find what they’re looking for. However, in my library the set up is not conducive to this. I have an already very packed Fiction section where I have to weed every year to keep it from overflowing. My nonfiction section runs the length of the library, two shelves from the floor. The shelves are very short so most nonfiction titles are too tall to shelve with the spine facing out so I have to turn them. For this reason, as well as nonfiction just isn’t as popular as fiction, I had very low circulation numbers my entire four years so far. I’ve tried doing spotlights on certain sections, displays, book talks, etc. Nothing worked.
So I got creative. Again, Dewey is probably turning in his grave over this, but I honestly believe I have to do what’s in the best interest of my patrons and my library. Therefore, we started the nonfiction genrefication process in February by pulling all the books off the lower shelves across the library and weeding. After the weeding was done, then we started to put them in categories, just like I did for fiction. Only this time there would be way more categories than the genres I had picked for my fiction section. I was able to order white bins to put the books into on top of the previous nonfiction shelves and we were able to label them and put them in the bins. The next step I had planned for after Spring Break, only thanks to COVID-19 we never came back from Spring Break.
My plan in the fall is to color-code the books with colored dots that correlate with the color of the sign that’s on the bin. This makes it easy for my student library aides to shelve the books by matching the color dot with the color of the bin it’s supposed to go in. We had only had the books in bins for about a month, but I checked out more nonfiction titles in that one month than the entire four years I’ve been a librarian at that school. That makes this worth it to me. This section was underutilized, neglected and dated. One of my goals for this year when we return to face-to-face instruction is to continue to purchase new and relevant titles for the library to help bring up my collection age and finish labeling the books in the new nonfiction section. I then will need to change the Sublocation in Destiny so that students can easily find titles they’re looking for by searching in Destiny Discover and finding the matching bin for the book they want. Although, most students found what they wanted through browsing. It might not look the best or be the prettiest, but if kids are checking out these books and reading more informational texts and nonfiction titles, then I feel like I’m doing my job.
Un-Dewey & Genrefy Your Library Collection
Learn how to genrefy your Fiction section in your school library!
My first year as a secondary librarian at OakRun Middle School began in August 2015. My first year I decided I wanted to genrefy my Fiction collection. This can be a daunting task for even a seasoned librarian, let alone one that had never been at a secondary campus before and it was my first year at this particular school. However, I'd seen a presentation on it in April 2015 at TLA and was very passionate about why it would be the best choice for my patrons.
Step 1: WEED! This is where you can really start to get a feel for your collection and what you want to toss and keep. It's great to run reports ahead of time to make weeding easier. When you know which books don't get circulated, it helps justify those decisions. You don't want to waste stickers or labels on books you don't plan on keeping in your collection so make sure you weed first.
Step 2: Either go through your collection yourself to choose the genres that would best fit your inventory OR use a collection service by Mackin or Follett. I used Mackin to have them take my collection and tell me which books should fit into which genres. Even with that service (it cost about $200 back then) I still had to go through each book because some of their genres weren't ones I was using such as Animals or Romance.
Step 3: Decide on your visuals. Do you want colored labels, genre stickers, colored dots, etc. on each book and how will you change them in your library management card catalog system? I chose genre stickers from Demco on each of my genre sections. Later I would also add colored labels to make them easier to see further away. Then instead of changing each spine label I decided just to change the Sublocation in Destiny to reflect which section of the library that book was in i.e. Fantasy, Realistic Fiction, etc.
Step 4: Start pulling the books off the shelf and begin physically labeling them. This is what took the longest. We were still checking out books to students so we had a revolving door of books coming in and out throughout the year. I printed out a spreadsheet of every Fiction title with the genre it should be in the column next to the title. Then when my student library aides had time they would pull books off the shelf and give them their proper genre sticker and put them back. This meant the books were labeled, but still not put in sections yet--they were on the shelf in alpha order.
Step 5: Operation Genrefication: This occurred the Thursday before Spring Break 2016. I asked every student to turn in their books (if they wanted to) so we could have as many as possible in. Then after school we grabbed tables and set up stations to put books on each table separated by genre. This cleared off all the shelves to begin the genrefying process. We then decided to go biggest genre section to smallest beginning with Fantasy. We put the books in alpha order within their correct genres on the shelves. This took about 4 hours to complete and I had about 10 student helpers. It was a lot of fun and felt very satisfying at the end to complete it. Here's an article completed by our district about this event and process.
Step 6: It's a continuous process. Even after I finished, I have added sections, added colored labels to the books, created new areas--for me, it's a constant process. I love putting books into our Destiny system individually so I can choose the correct genres, but I know a lot of librarians prefer to just upload MARC records. However, Follett and other companies have made it so easy now to choose genre titles for MARC and have them labeled exactly as you want it when the books are shipped. Genrefication has definitely caught on since I did it four years ago. This past year I decided to finally do Non-fiction. Stay tuned for how that is going!
Please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns you might have. I have presented on this topic with other librarians in the state of Texas at TLA. See one of those presentations below.