Category: Genrefication

Genrefying the Everybody Section

1/2/2024

Why not genrefy the picture books?
It seemed like an obvious move in an elementary school library with over 800 students. The collection was large, new, and up to date, but a fair number of students were not yet reading on grade level.

Classroom teachers would regularly request that I pull books for them around a certain theme or topic - especially read-aloud picture books that were appropriate for various grade levels (our campus served PK - 5) - but the books in the Everybody section were alphabetized by author's last name. If a teacher stopped by during lunch and tried to grab a few books on the fly, they would need to know exactly what they needed, or refer to the digital Virtual Book Rooms I created - but never had time to update with the latest titles.

When our youngest students visited the library, I made sure to pull some books face up on tables to increase browsability and minimize choice fatigue (it helped the older ones, too). I had multiple displays, including a semi-permanent superheroes area and a semi-permanent fairies, unicorns, and princesses area, and these were hugely popular. I experimented with bins and colored dots and an early reader graphic novel section. And after almost four years of students coming in and asking "Where are the funny books?" or "Where are the scary books?" and explaining that we didn't shelve them that way, I started wondering why we didn't.

Genrefication in the Picture Book Sections
I designed a complete genrefication system for my elementary library, and I was ready to deploy it, but I switched jobs before I got to implement it. I know every campus is unique, but I really wish I had been able to see that genrefied system in action, because I think it would have increased student independence, connected more students to books they wanted to read, and it would have been a friendlier set-up for teachers trying to find read-aloud mentor texts. Instead, I joined a middle school campus with a much smaller collection of picture books and completely different needs.

One hiccup was that in that in my former district, we did not use Destiny, so we could not use local campus-based sub-locations. Since it's necessary to have the catalog location reflect where each book really "lives" on the shelves (see some of my other guidelines for making genrefication work in your school library), and since no other elementary schools in the district were ready to genrefy their picture book sections yet, there was an implementation pause. Our district library leaders wanted to ensure we weren't cluttering the catalog with huge numbers of dropdown options, and decided to develop committees to have uniform sub-location names. That way, campus libraries that chose to genrefy would have sub-location name options with some standardization (which made sense, given that many of our students moved frequently from one district school to another).

However, since I already did all the work of determining the categories and figured out a system for setting it up, I wanted to share what I developed in case it helps other librarians and schools. You can read about my very detailed process for genrefying nonfiction books in this blog post, but I actually built that experience on the process I followed to genrefy the everybody section in my former library.

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How I Genrefied the Nonfiction Section of My Middle School Library

1/1/2024

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I'm going to walk through the steps of genrefying my middle school library, so if I can help anyone else through this process, I'm happy to share my ideas! I don't claim to have perfect solutions or to have the most efficient mechanism for the change, but you can take a look at why I wanted to ditch Dewey for genrefication in this post.

Before I get into the details, I'll clarify that I inherited a genrefied nonfiction section at the elementary library in my first school library role, so all credit to the librarian who preceded me at that school - Vanessa Stenulson - for her decision-making and championing the system.

I also want to say that I'm not afraid of complexity, so although I always keep simplification for the user at the forefront, I considered a lot of details through the process. If you want the shortest path, I might not be your best bet.

The TL;DR version is:
Weed, Categorize, Tape/Refine Categories, Sticker, Move/Signage, Catalog

Additionally, I came to see that genrefication was really a good solution for the picture book section of my elementary library, too, and I designed a detailed system for that, but I changed schools before I was able to fully implement it.

The nonfiction is in that very back corner area - it doesn't do much to attract readers

Nonfiction books are packed into shelves and hard to see individually

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Why Not Dewey?

12/31/2023

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I first became a school librarian in the 2019 - 2020 school year. In the second week of March, 2020, I celebrated a birthday, found out I passed my state school librarian license exam, and our elementary team took first place in our district's Battle of the Bluebonnets competition. Then we left for spring break, and we never came back to in-person learning that school year.

Already Genrefied
However, in July of 2019, I didn't see COVID coming. I inherited a beautiful library space with an almost-new collection on a campus that was only three years old. The prior librarian was ahead of her time, and genrefied the nonfiction section of the elementary library, which served over 800 students. This nonfiction organization generated a lot of discussion for adults, but it was familiar to the kids, who knew where to find biographies and books about dinosaurs. Shelving nonfiction was easy for the library assistant (I was so lucky to have one!) and volunteers, since books with matching stickers went together on a shelf, without worrying about decimal order, and signage was clear.

Most students, for a variety of reasons, were browsers and not catalog users (we were working to build that capacity). We were fortunate to have plenty of electronic databases for research, but our nonfiction print books were also updated and all in good condition. The main downside was when someone - usually an adult - came in looking for a particular book that happened to belong to a large section - like general animals - that took up two or three shelves. In those cases, it could take longer to locate a specific book than it would if it were shelved by the decimal.

I was encouraged to switch back to Dewey, mostly because the other elementary schools were organized that way, and it was thought to be good preparation for elementary students to encounter the same Dewey organization at their middle schools. Further, our nonfiction circulation was not greater than other schools, which had been a key argument to the set-up in the first place. So in December of 2019, with generous help from adult volunteers, we moved the books "back" into Dewey order.

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Genrefying the Everybody Section

How I Genrefied the Nonfiction Section of My Middle School Library

Why Not Dewey?

Jamie Wright

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© 2017 - 2024 - Ideas for Learners by Jamie Wright

Genrefying the Everybody Section

How I Genrefied the Nonfiction Section of My Middle School Library

Why Not Dewey?

Jamie Wright

Categories

Archives

Alphabetical List of Book RecommendationsBook Recommendations by TopicBook Recommendations by Grade LevelPicture Books for LessonsMiddle School Book Talk VideosBlog Posts about Reading Instruction

© 2017 - 2024 - Ideas for Learners by Jamie Wright

Alphabetical List of Book Recommendations
Book Recommendations by Topic
Book Recommendations by Grade Level
Picture Books for Lessons
Middle School Book Talk Videos
Blog Posts about Reading Instruction