One of the changes we made in our library this fall was genrefying our fiction books. That means books aren’t shelved A-Z, but instead are grouped by genre/type: Mystery, Adventure, Fantasy, Science Fiction — like a bookstore. Or the way Netflix presents its offerings, “If you liked Breaking Bad, you also might like Orange is the New Black.” We made this change because kids rarely came in looking for a particular author, but they were always asking, “I like horror books. What should I read?” Or, “Do you have more books like Harry Potter?” Those questions left me scrambling to find suggestions since I was limited to books I had read personally. Now I can respond, “Yes! All of the Fantasy books have gold labels. If you browse through those shelves there are tons of books that you might like.”
When kids want to find a particular book, I can look it up on the computer and see how we’ve labeled it — that required putting our hands on every book in the library and skimming the back cover and inside flaps and looking online to see how other readers categorized it. It was a lot of work over the course of 2 months, but now finding a book is much easier. Each genre is assigned a color and a category label so I can pin down where a book is on the shelf in seconds (provided that it’s been put back properly — a different battle to fight.)
Today I was helping a student find a book. He knew the title, but wasn’t sure where it was shelved. I looked it up in the computer and saw it was labeled REAL for realistic fiction, books that are set in modern time (now) dealing with real life situations (as opposed 3 billion books about vampires. Thanks a lot, Twilight).
“Yes, we have that book. It’s shelved in the Realistic fiction section. Those are the books with the blue labels.” He brightened up and said, “Oh yeah! Because the story is written like it took place a really long time ago — in the 1980s. It was published in 2014, but it was written about a different time period.” Dang. This kid must think I’m ancient. Also, he needs a refresher on the difference between realistic and historical fiction.
I’m not calling the 1980s historical fiction — yet . . . but we’re getting close.