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.