I’ve been thinking about reclassifying books in fiction according to genre since our local high school took on the project. Kids frequently ask questions such as, “Where are the scary books?”, or “Where are the sports books in fiction?” I want to help kids find books they are most interested in reading and with close to 7,000 books in our fiction section, it just makes sense to subdivide.
After much research online of school and public libraries who have taken on the project, I decided to go for it this year. I debated on adding non-fiction to the reclassification project. I considered placing historical fiction by historical non-fiction and science fiction by non-fiction science books. In the end, I decided to divide fiction first to see how it worked with the kids. I chose Adventure, Picture Books, Fantasy, Historical, Sports, Science, Mystery, Realistic, Graphic Novels, and Horror as my subdivisions. I decided against changing out the spine labels and went with adding colored paper tape from Demco for each. I chose the tape dispenser from the Library Store. After the sections are done, I will batch process the books in the library catalog to add the genre to the call number(For example: Adv F Avi or Sci F Whi). This will help students searching the library catalog to find the books in the subdivided sections in the library easier.
So far I’ve completed around 25% of the collection and I’ve already seen big difference. Kids are finding books a bit easier now and are starting to go to the areas they are most interested in reading from. I’m also starting to see areas of the collection which need more titles. It is a slow process and I don’t know if I will get finished before the end of the school year. Overall, I like it and I think it will make a big difference helping kids find great books to read. Does anyone have any suggestions for non-fiction? I’m thinking this may be our project for next year.
Resources:
Mrs. Readerpants: The Library Genre-fication Project
Mr. Dewey, I Bid You Adieu
Summer Project: Kill Dewey
Using Wordfoto App for Genre Signs
So We Ditched Dewey….What Comes Next For Our Books and Shelves?
Scoop.it: Dewey Free Library
What’s Your Genre? Quiz
The Dewey Dilemma
Interrsting. I like how you thought through it all and you shared the process. So far have just done Fic? What about E books?
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you, Martha. I’m in a middle school so I’ve always shelved easy books in with all of fiction. With the new system, I created a genre section called Picture Books for easy.
[…] past year, I decided to separate fiction into genres(Genrefication of Fiction) to help make it easier for students to find books they were interested in reading. I also promised […]
I love the idea of using coloured tape! When I did ours I designed and printed simple colour coded labels that said the genre on them. I like how clear it is but it was a pain to also have to cover each spine with another clear protective coating. That doubled the work! I was wondering what you use the coloured dots on the upper part of the book spines for?
Thanks so much! We debated about the colored tape, but it simply was the cheapest way to go. The kids are loving the new system so much I’m currently brainstorming ways to do this with non-fiction too. The dot at the top represents the reading level of the book so that at a glance kids can find books on their level easier.
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