My Journey to Genrefication 2016

My Journey to Genrefication

Becky Vancura-Teacher-Librarian Boulder High School


I had been contemplating organizing the fiction collection by genre for several years. The altruistic statement for why do this would be, “To make the collection more browser friendly, thereby making it simpler for students to locate a title they are interested in reading”. But in the spirit of full disclosure, I was tired of the being asked, “Where are the scary books?” “Where are the sports books?” “Where are more books like 13 Reasons Why?”

The biggest obstacle to getting this done was time. Where would I find the time to sort through the collection book by book? The answer to my dilemma came in an email I received early in the fall of 2014. The gist of the email was, my son will be a freshmen at Boulder High. We’ve just relocated from the Washington D.C. area. I am a retired Library of Congress Librarian. I would like to volunteer in your library. At first the thought of a Library of Congress Librarian as a volunteer was rather intimidating. I could not ask her to just dust shelves and cover books. Then it dawned on me - I could charge her with the genrefication of fiction! Once every year or so I have a really brilliant idea. She was an incredible source of information and a great sounding board.

Getting Started 

The first step was deciding which genres to use. After some discussion we settled on the following:

• General Fiction
• Historical Fiction
• Issues & Relationships
• Mysteries & Suspense
• Horror, Science Fiction
• Fantasy
• Sports

Your collection may have other genres by which you would like to sort. Next decision, how will you identify the different genres on the shelf? To avoid reprinting spine labels and re labeling every book, we decided to color code the different genres. We used Demco transparent colored spine label protectors, a different color for each genre. We did consider the DEMCO genre stickers but decided most of them were a bit juvenile for a high school library.

Cataloging & Logistics

Rather than completely uprooting the entire collection, I would recommend starting with one or two of the smaller genres. We started with sports. After my parent volunteer had gone through the collection and pulled a specific genre, we checked in cataloging on the ILS under the “MARC Expert” tab in the Copy Information for a specific title to be sure the correct genre was listed in the 650 code box. Books may have multiple genres listed. If the genre needed to be added, we sent an email to our district cataloger (Rae C.) asking that the genre be added to the copies’ information. The correct color label protectors were added to the books and the books were reshelved together.

The one exception to adding additional genres to the copy information was Historical Fiction. If the genre of Historical Fiction was not already designated in the MARC record we did not add it. In most cases the book would end up in General Fiction. We decided on this as we puzzled where to put Dickens and Austin. We might have created a Classic Fiction genre but we didn’t feel it was necessary for our collection.

To make inventory a little easier, Michael Serrano, BHS Media Tech, created new circ types to correspond with the color coded genre. We changed the circ type to the new genre for all the books in that section. For example,  Fiction - Green is the circ type for Sports Fiction. For specifics on how to do this please direct your questions to Michael Serrano, my amazing Media Tech. This change also made it easy to change the designated location for an entire collection in the catalog. I was able to batch process the change in location rather than needing to scan every individual book. Now when we search for a fiction title in the catalog it will list the correct genre under location.

Mixing Fiction and Nonfiction and Dewey

I support the idea of making libraries more browser friendly similar to the model used in bookstores. However, I believe there is still value to having the collections divided into Fiction and Nonfiction. I think Barnes & Noble still separates these two. In addition, it is still important to have some standardization between libraries to allow students to transfer their library skills to other libraries.



I also believe there is still a place for the Dewey Decimal System in the school library. The system, like any system is not perfect, but it does a reasonable job of sorting books into categories. Where the individual librarian might consider tinkering, to make the collection more browser friendly, is in clearly labeling bookcases and shelves. Large signs could be used for labelling sections. For example, use large signage for main subject categories, Philosophy, Religion, Mythology, and smaller, shelf talker labels can be used to further narrow the browser's search, for example Christianity, Islam, Greek Myths, Roman Myths, etc.

Outcomes

In addition to separating the genres, the process of genrefication presented an excellent opportunity to weed the collection as every book is literally pulled and examined. Another positive side effect of the process was it identified genres in the collection that might benefit from additional books being added to the collection. I discovered the collection needed more sports fiction.

The process has made it easier for students to browse a prefered genre when looking for a book to read. Also, when looking for a specific book, given the call number, I think the likelihood for success of the student to find the book independently increases when they have fewer books to search.