The signage helps to make the library so user friendly. Our students are able to come in and find books easily using the signage and tags on the books to find their books. I thought the best way to show the signage and perhaps answer some questions that people have had through this blog series would be through the use of a video tour:

These are the signs I’ve created for the fiction sections. The images were creating use an app called WordFoto. Then I added the text portion in Photoshop.

Click here for the fiction signs on Flickr…free to download & use!

I created my own stickers/nonfiction signs in Comic Life, using public domain graphics from OpenClipArt.org.

Click here for the nonfiction signs on Flickr…free to download & use!

Deciding to genrefy our library was definitely not about me. Seriously, it was a lot of work and it would have been MUCH easier for me to leave things as they were. Going through this process of completely changing the organization of our library was 100% about the students. My students feel like this is THEIR library. They can find what they’re looking for easily. They love being able to explore within a genre. They’re more likely to pick up a nonfiction book because it just makes sense where it’s located. But don’t take my word for it. This is the video of what the students say about genrefication (this video was created for the AASL Ditching Dewey presentation, so it doesn’t just include my students):

Making changes in the catalog is an important part of the genrefication process. If possible, I would recommend doing this step of the process over the summer, when most books are returned. Of course, I didn’t…and it took quite some time to “catch” all of the books that were out at the time of the change.

For our fiction books, I first cleaned up the record in Destiny, making sure all of the call numbers followed the F ABC format, instead of Fic ABC. Then, one of my awesome volunteers went section by section, working through the books, adding an extra letter (seen in the photo above) to denote the genre category. Like I said, we did this in the middle of the year, which made it a messy process to complete as books were constantly being checked out and returned. We also did books one by one, because I didn’t think to use the Batch Update feature (DUH!) in Destiny. Lesson learned, and we used batch update when we genrefied the nonfiction section. Here’s what a sample of our fiction section looks like in the catalog:

For nonfiction, we used the batch update feature to add the category name in front of the call number. I didn’t want to get rid of the Dewey call numbers completely just in case…so they’re still there:

This is what things look like in Destiny when you do a Batch Update:

You would set the update up to make the changes you want, then scan in the books to the barcode list. SO much quicker and easier!

Making catalog changes is definitely not the most glamorous step in the genrefication process, but it must be done (and done correctly!).

Next up in this series is the most glamorous step of all…Signage!

There was quite a lot of moving in the gentrification process for me! We rearranged/moved the fiction books, then the nonfiction books, and shortly after we moved the entire library into our new facility.

After all of our fiction books were tagged with their tinted label stickers, it was time to make the move. We decided how we wanted the genres arranged (yes, we did this planning on a napkin!):

As usual, was ready to throw myself into the moving process without thinking about it for too terribly long. I gathered every cart I could get my hands on and started pulling books. This was easy since everything was so clearly labeled. I pulled out the genres one by one and shifted things down as I went.

Although this wasn’t the most complicated part of the process, I found it to be the most overwhelming. The library was a mess, books were everywhere, eek! This picture pretty much sums up how I felt during the move:

I used a different approach with moving nonfiction. After an extremely extensive weeding, I sorted the books into their new categories. The weeding freed up a great deal of shelf space, so I was able have some room to spread things out. With nonfiction, I wanted everything sorted out into categories before I tagged them with their new stickers. I sorted them out into the categories that I had already decided upon, but I did make some minor changes as I worked through the books. I found that I needed to add some categories and some could be condensed. Once I had the categories all worked out, I put the new label stickers on the books. Then, I sorted the larger categories, such as science and history, into smaller subcategories.

My next post will detail the changes made in the catalog, so I won’t get into that now, but I often get the question, “How do your shelvers know what subcategory books belong to?” For this reason, I have put subcategory stickers on the front inside cover of the books:

I was on quite a deadline to finish the genrefication process for both fiction and nonfiction in our library — at the end of the year that I worked through the process, we were to move into a new building! This is why I pushed through to get my nonfiction reorganized so quickly; I wanted to be able to move into the new library and have our fiction and nonfiction paired. I put a lot of thought into what our new arrangement would look like, how I could make the most of our new space, and a plan to pack up and then unload the books. Measuring out linear shelf space and the amount of space our books would take up, I came up with a plan and packed the books onto our moving carts in the order that they would be unloaded

 

Just looking back at these pictures overwhelms me! I started the summer of 2012 not knowing when I would be able to get into the new library:

I have to say, I don’t think that having my nonfiction genrefied would make as much sense to me if I didn’t have the fiction and nonfiction paired. For example, my sports fiction and nonfiction are shelved right next to each other:

 

I’ll talk more about this in a future post when I talk about Signage & Arrangement. Next, I’ll be sharing something that folks are always curious about…catalog changes!

The labeling of your books is a key part of the genrefication process. Think long and hard when deciding what labels you want to use…you’ll be looking at them for many years to come! 

I’m very happy with the choices I made for labels!

For our fiction books, I purchased Demco Color-Tinted Glossy Label Protectors to go over the spine labels. I love this look, because when I look at a fiction section, all of the books are labeled with the same color, so it’s very easy to see a book that’s in the wrong section.

Doesn’t that look nice?!

These are samples of books from my eight fiction genres:

Did you notice the orange dots at the top of some of the books? That’s how we mark our series books.

So once I had my genres decided and my stickers ready to go, I started at the beginning. I went book by book through my fiction section and evaluated. When I started this process, I was brand new to the library. And it needed some serious weeding. I spent many weeks weeding and tagging my way through the fiction section. It was a long and tedious process, but I’m so glad I did it (and did it myself). Whenever I had a little bit of spare time, I grabbed my box of tinted labels and went to work. I would look at the subjects on the copyright pages, read summaries, refer to the catalog, or talk to students who had read the book to decide on their genres. Instead of focusing more on the technicalities of the particular genres, I tried to think more in terms of, “What type of reader would be most likely to enjoy this book?” By working my way through the fiction section, weeding and genre tagging, I got to know my collection very well!

I approached nonfiction a little differently. First I weeded…SERIOUS weeding. That shrunk the size of my collection significantly. Then I sorted and tagged nonfiction. Obviously, sorting from Dewey into categories wasn’t that difficult. But it did make me SO HAPPY to put the pets and other animals in a section together. It made me even happier to move those darn military vehicles in with the war books. And I had a plan for arranging fiction and nonfiction sections near each other…which wasn’t happening with Dewey. But more on that later!

I created my own labels for the nonfiction categories. I had tons and tons of these spine label sheets, I used graphics from OpenClipArt.org, and I put the designs together in Comic Life. All of the labels that I’ve created can be found here on my Flickr account, free for you to use if you’d like! Here’s how they look on the books:

 

This is where I admit that I’m a label/tape snob. Back at my first library, I made new spine labels for lots of books and covered them with whatever label protectors I had lying around. MISTAKE! They all fell off. So I got in touch with Demco and they sent me samples of all of their label protectors. Now, I exclusively use Demco’s Ultra-Agressive Glossy Label Protectors. And those go over the top of EVERYTHING. And it stays put!

It would be much easier to go through the labeling process over the summer, with all of the books in the library. Of course, that’s not what I did! It took quite a while to work through this process as I continued to tag books as they were returned. But eventually, they were all properly labeled and ready for the next step…

Next up is “Making the Move!”

 

One of my favorite things to talk about in library land is the genrefication of our library. I frequently get questions about this from folks who have read my blog posts or have seen me present. I blogged about the process all along the way, from the tagging my fiction books, to genre shelving fiction, to ditching Dewey in nonfiction. Those posts were basically my reflections and thoughts from when I made the move. For a while now, I’ve been wanting to write a more comprehensive blog post that I can share as a reference for people interested in genrefying their library. After our AASL presentation, I realized that a series of blog posts would be the way to go. So this post will be the first of several that will detail the process I used to genrefy the fiction and nonfiction sections of our library.

The first step in the process is to choose the genre categories that you will use. For fiction, I didn’t want to get too specific with my genres. My original categories for fiction were: realistic fiction, sports, romance, Sci-Fi/fantasy, mystery/suspense/horror, and series. As I sorted through the books, I made some changes to these categories so it made more sense for our collection and our students. I decided that it would be better for the series to go with their genres and clearly label them as series within their corresponding sections. I also added several more sections. Our fiction genres now include: historical fiction, general/realistic fiction, Sci-Fi/fantasy, action/adventure, mystery/suspense, sports fiction, relationships/romance, and inspirational fiction.

After the success I found with our genrefied fiction, I wanted to follow suit with our nonfiction. Choosing these categories was a little harder for me. Thankfully, I had my friend Tamara Cox to look to for advice. I took her nonfiction category choices and tweaked them to work with our collection. These are the categories we use for nonfiction in our library:

Some of our larger sections are broken into subcategories as well. This is our section and subsection breakdown:

Section List

Something that I love about this arrangement is that nothing is set in stone and you’re free to make changes to work best for your students and your curriculum — it’s okay to make some changes your categories and subcategories as you go. Make your plan for your categories, but don’t be afraid to tweak it as you go!

Watch for the next post: Labeling the Books