How I Genrefied the Nonfiction Section of My Middle School Library

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

So when I arrived at my new middle school campus, it was about twenty years old, with a beautiful, well-lit, big space. The nonfiction books were in a corner, farthest from the entrance, and most of them were as old as the building, meaning they were published several years before the students in the school were born. (I'm well aware many people have much older libraries with far fewer resources, so I understand I'm in fortunate circumstances.)

The books were definitely in need of weeding, and they were organized in Dewey (except that biography and graphic novels were in separate, grouped sections). They mostly went from the left edge of one shelf all the way to the right edge of the same shelf. If there were six baseball books that didn't fit on the top shelf, they were on the left edge of the next shelf down. There were some new Demco shelf divider signs - black with brightly colored illustrations - to indicate animals and sports, for example, but it was clear that no one really looked at the nonfiction section. Students didn't browse there, and the circulation statistics for nonfiction were mostly attributed to teacher use for research projects.

I know better than to change things right away, and I know I would advise others to get to know the collection and the student population better before making a giant change the first year, but it was immediately clear that the system in place was not inviting. The books were mostly old and unappealing, in contrast to the fiction and graphic novel sections, which were much more updated - and saw regular traffic and interest. We had a lot of online databases available for research purposes, but very few of the 1100 students saw the nonfiction section as a resource of reading for pleasure. I distributed interest surveys, interviewed student library aides and library club members, and observed checkout patterns in the first weeks, and ultimately decided to weed and genrefy nonfiction, with the goal of increasing circulation.

Weeding
I can't emphasize enough how important weeding is to the genrefication process. Of course every campus collection and needs are different, and some librarians find it difficult to remove books "just in case" someone might need them. I definitely felt that concern, but I talked a lot to the students who spent the most time in the library, and I checked the circulation statistics, publication date, and information for every book I weeded.

The first round of weeding was pretty easy. A lot of middle school students think anything that happened a year ago was a long time ago, so most of our nonfiction books didn't have a lot of appeal due to outdated photographs and subject matter.

I remember this hair. My students don't.

This is . . . a lot.

Weeding, cont.
We removed lots of outdated books, and gradually, the shelves started to have room for front-facing books. It helped a little. But it was still really easy to find more books that were not appealing, or that had old information. There were also duplicate copies of some information, like five books about Ireland, each published in 2002 or 2003. Students were helpful in giving opinions about which ones were more appealing to keep, and they started getting interested in some of the titles they hadn't been able to see before.

Overall, though, I was still too tentative and should have removed even more books at this first stage, before I started the next step.

Still a little crowded, still in Dewey order, but easier to see after some weeding.

Neighborhood Categories
My original plan was to keep a few main "neighborhood" categories for nonfiction so I wouldn't have too many sublocations cluttering the catalog. The fiction section in my middle school library was already genrefied, with these categories:
Fantasy
Science Fiction
Realistic Fiction
Humor
Sports
Adventure
Historical Fiction
Romance
Mystery
Horror
and graphic novels were in their own section in the fiction area. So I thought that about 10 nonfiction categories would be a good balance.

My original nonfiction neighborhood categories were:
Recreation - there was already a Sports genre for fiction, so to avoid confusion, in nonfiction this would include sports, optical illusions, and games
The Arts - performing and visual arts, including film and photography, but excluding writing
Health - physical, emotional, mental health, diseases, self-awareness, goal-setting, safety
Community - social topics, geography, culture
Then & Now - history topics (I kept this name from the genrefying librarian at my previous school, Vanessa Stenulson)
STEM - science, technology, engineering, and math topics
Language - poetry, world languages
Myths - fairy tales, legends, world myths, the unexplained

I arrived at these broad categories from spending time examining the collection and seeing what was left after extensive weeding.

Generally, I was happy with how those categories worked out, although Community and STEM were considerably larger than everything else. Animals could have been its own section, outside of STEM (and, minor point - my math sub-category was very small and I ended up putting those books with finance and business in the community section).

I chose to move the Myths books over to the fiction area, near fantasy, because it seemed logical to have dragon and magic-user myth books in that area. It also gave me a little extra room to make space in the nonfiction section for clear-cut categories.

Selecting Sub-Categories
This was absolutely a messy stage. I could run reports to see call numbers, but for me, putting my hands on the books and really looking each title made all the difference in determining whether we had enough books to make sub-categories within each neighborhood. I couldn't leave several hundred books in "Recreation" and call it done - I needed to figure out which topics within each neighborhood section - like basketball or soccer - would qualify as a sticker-worthy sub-categories.

The Spine Labels
I opted to leave the traditional spine label and add one more to indicate the genres. Since my fiction section already had Demco genre labels immediately above the one-inch traditional spine label, I opted to do the same thing in nonfiction. So every book would now have the traditional spine label with the Dewey number and the first three digits of the author's last name, and immediately above that, there would be a one-inch nonfiction genre label. It would be relatively uncluttered on the spine and clearly communicate where the book should "live" on the shelf, and if anyone needed the traditional Dewey number, it would still be visible.

However, since Demco (or any other company) doesn't sell nonfiction genre labels that match my needs, I would have to create, print, and apply my own.

Example of 1-inch nonfiction genre sticker, created with Canva, above the traditional nonfiction spine label

How Many Sub-Categories Are Too Many?
For me, this is the trickiest decision making of all. The more sub-categories, the easier it is for patrons to find what they're looking for. For example, having hundreds of books in a general "sports" sub-category, even if they were alphabetized by author, would be harder to comb through, but having separate sub-categories - and stickers - for gymnastics, basketball, soccer, baseball, volleyball, swimming, and so forth would make it faster to find those topics.

The more categories there are, the more likely the need to change some. As the collection evolves, it makes sense that some sub-categories would collapse as you weed and expand as you add more titles. Having more sub-categories also requires more sticker designs and more signage. Most critically, having hundreds of sub-categories starts to become so specific that more books go into the maybe pile, because they could reasonably belong to multiple different categories, so that could be confusing for patrons to navigate, and the goal is improved browsability.

I ended up deciding that about 75% of a shelf length was a good size for a category. If I had fewer titles than that, they could be combined with others. I won't pretend that I came up with a perfect sub-category solution - or even that one exists - but I established a working draft, which definitely changed as I worked through the next step. (See my sub-categories list later in this post.)

Tape
I started this process toward the beginning of the school year, so students and teachers were checking out books during the whole process. Fortunately (but also unfortunately, for obvious reasons), so few students visited the nonfiction section of the library that the work really didn't intrude on patrons that much, and there wasn't a lot of worry that their checkouts would disrupt sorting in progress.

Still, I didn't want to have to sort books into piles and then inevitably have some get moved and have to re-sort and decide again, and I didn't want to move everything to its new spot without any marking or sense of where it was located during the re-organization phase. Since the traditional spine label was and would remain on the book, I left the books in their Dewey organization, but started sorting them by adding color-coded masking tape to the top of the spines.

This is Craftzilla brand masking tape, which both adhered well and was easy to remove, without taking plastic covering or cardboard bits with it.

As you will no doubt notice, there are only 11 colors, and I definitely had more than 11 sub-categories, so I used a color-coded system that assigned a Neighborhood Category color on top, and striped additional colors underneath. For example, all books in the STEM neighborhood had a green stripe on top, and technology books had a black stripe under the green. This was complex and might not be for everyone, but for me, this helped save time and money later - if I didn't do this rough draft stage to see what my sub-categories really looked like, I would have ended up designing and printing sticker labels that I didn't need, and several category names would have changed. So the tape was a less expensive rehearsal for the permanent sticker labels.

A note: I didn't have to put tape on some of the books, because I knew that the origami books would be with crafts and the football books would be in their own section - so even if those got checked out or moved to other piles before they were formally stickered, it wouldn't be hard to identify them.

Spine Label temporary masking tape before the permanent genre stickers were created: the top color indicates the larger neighborhood category - in this case, STEM.

This was a messy, time-consuming process. I did have student library aides and some adult volunteers help to apply the tape to books in different categories, but as long as it took me to do the majority of it, I still wish I had done all of it myself. As I put my hands on each book, it was another opportunity to weed books that really weren't worth keeping, or to lift individual books out and add them to a different category based on my own knowledge of the book and the categories. Volunteers didn't have a handle on that information the way I did. Some student volunteers just applied tape to whatever was in a given stack, even though some books clearly did not fit the category and should have been pulled out. Some student volunteers raised great questions and made recommendations, too - so it was a mixed bag to share the work load during this stage.

Honestly, if I were more patient, it would have been really valuable to have it be a completely student-driven process to determine the categories and place every book. Students would have been more invested in the process and familiar with the categories when we finished. But I also know that I'm the professional who has been examining the collection and learning, reading, and thinking more about library usage, so I drove the decisions and stayed open to input. My sub-category names and topics changed a lot throughout this stage of the process, and I'm sure they will evolve over time as the collection changes, too.

Pulling books for new sub-categories into stacks to be taped - it was messy

We kept finding books that would fit established, taped sub-categories - you can see some of those pulled out and stacked on top of the shelves before they were also taped.

Finalizing the sub-categories
There turned out to be another round of pretty heavy book weeding throughout the sub-category determination process. It didn't make sense to buy new stickers for old books that hadn't been circulated in ten years, even though it felt like we had already removed so many books. I wished I had been a little more severe in my earlier rounds of weeding the collection.

This brings me to an important point - I can't be sure if any future circulation success can be attributed to the genrefication or the thoughtful weeding of the nonfiction area, and I will say that as we got near the end of the taping process for the last sections, more and more students seemed to be visiting the nonfiction nook, suggesting that removing the old books did a lot to increase the appeal in that area.

The community (social studies topics) area of nonfiction was the most challenging section to create categories for, so I did that one last. Everything else had been assigned to a logical section before I wrestled with those groups and what to call them, although of course I had a draft in mind before I started.

Here are the sub-categories, or topic genres I ended up using for this campus and this collection:

Recreation - neighborhood "area" genre - not a specific sticker, just a grouping (Each topic underneath each area group gets a unique sticker label)
Football & Soccer
Baseball (includes softball)
Basketball
Skateboarding
Racing - includes cars and biking
Martial Arts
Water & Winter Sports (swimming, hockey, diving, surfing, skiing, skating)
Other Sports (volleyball, tennis, golf, gymnastics, archery, Olympics)
Outdoor Adventure (fishing, camping, hunting, hiking, mountain climbing)
Fun Facts (world records books)
Fun (optical illusions, seek & find, magic tricks) - kept this label from Vanessa Stenulson
Toys & Games

Health - "area" genre category
Human Body - how it works when it works as designed
Physical Health - diseases (calling it diseases seemed dark, but it's about physical diseases and injuries)
Social, Emotional, and Mental Health
Personal Safety - includes Internet safety,  decisions that enhance well-being
Substances
Medicine
Cells & Genes - includes evolution, DNA, micro-organisms
Death - I felt weird about this category, but there were a lot of books about cultural traditions, or coping with terminal diseases, or dealing with loss
Survival - strategies for surviving different situations and real-life survival stories
Self - I kept this label name from Vanessa Stenulson; I used it to encompass books about goal-setting, self-awareness, inspirational/aspirational advice books, and negotiating relationships with friends and family
Food, Cooking, and Nutrition

The Arts - area genre category
Music, Musicians
Visual Art, Visual Artists
Crafts - how to draw books, origami, sewing, etc.
Stage & Screen - dance, theatre, film, photography
Fashion
Media - journalism, interpreting media, advertising, etc.

STEM - area genre category - Animals really stands alone as its own area category, too
Animals - area category - we had far more books about animals at the elementary level than we had at this middle school, so more sub-categories would be necessary with more books
General Animals - books about various animals grouped by a characteristic, for example
Endangered Animals
Mammals
Pets & Farm Animals
Fish & Sea Creatures
Insects & Arachnids
Reptiles & Amphibians
Birds
Prehistoric Planet - dinosaurs, other

STEM - area category
Physics
Chemistry
Geology
Weather & Natural Disasters - includes climate, water cycle
Disasters - man-made; ended up moving Survival stories from health next to these
Environmentalism - activism for nature and the planet, pollution, recycling
Ecosystems & Habitats - descriptions of interactions and characteristics, food chains
Energy - sources and uses
Plants, Farming, and Gardening - includes soil
Outer Space, Space Travel
Inventions & Experiments
Coding & Technology
Math - ended up moving this to Community with Finance & Business
STEM - More to Explore - a few strays that didn't fit anywhere else

Community - area category
Geography - organized alphabetically by place
Maps & Explorers
Spies & Crime - includes law enforcement, forensics, true crime
Architecture & Landmarks
Land Travel
Water Travel - includes pirates and shipwrecks
Air Travel (located near Outer Space and Space Travel)
Finance; Math - includes brands, business, economics
U.S. Military
Warriors & Weaponry
U.S. Presidents - includes First Ladies
U.S. Voting & Government - includes elections, suffrage, U.S. patriotism
Government Types and International Groups
Courts - includes U.S. Supreme Court cases and justices
Notable People - kept this label from Vanessa Stenulson; includes political leaders with global impact
Biography - includes human stories from lesser-known people; note that athletes, artists, actors, inventors, authors, and U.S. President biographies all go with their sub-categories
Celebrating People - collective biographies, books highlighting groups' contributions
First Nations Peoples
Faith & Philosophy
Life Around the World - includes traditions, holidays, demographic comparisons
Careers - these mostly fit with subject areas, but there were still some that didn't
Texas - it's geography and history, but we're in Texas and it gets its own shelf
Social Issues - large section, includes 3 separate shelves
Social Studies - More to Explore - a few strays that didn't fit anywhere else

Then & Now - area genre category; kept label name from Vanessa Stenulson
Pre- Modern Civilizations
1100 - 1620 - includes Medieval knights, the Renaissance, Columbus, Mayflower
1620 - 1788 - includes Colonial America, U.S. Revolution
1789 - 1860 - includes French Revolution, U.S. Gold Rush, Oregon Trail, Trail of Tears, War of 1812
1861 - 1869 - includes U.S. Civil War & Reconstruction
1870 - 1938 - includes WWI, U.S. Great Depression, U.S. Roaring Twenties
1939 - 1945 - includes WWII; large section, includes 3 separate shelves
1946 - 1989 - includes U.S. - Korea War, U.S. - Vietnam War, Watergate, Cold War, Fall of Berlin Wall
U.S. Civil Rights Movement - although this fits in the 1946 - 1989 time frame, it has enough material to have its own category
1990 - Present - includes 9/11, Persian Gulf War, U.S. War in Afghanistan, COVID-19

Language - area genre category
Authors
World Languages (Spanish language books are in one part, everything else is in the other part)
Words - books about alphabets, idioms, and so forth
Poetry
Plays

Myths - area genre category located in fiction near the fantasy genre
World Myths & Tales - fairy tales and legends from around the world, organized alphabetically by author's last name
Legendary Beings - cryptids, dragons, unicorns
Ghost Stories - haunted tales
The Unexplained - alien sightings, crop circles, paranormal activity

I struggled a lot with many of these sub-categories. I wanted the wording to be inclusive and respectful, as well as brief and accurate. I didn't want to "other" First Nations Peoples by having a separate category, because surely those same books are about Celebrating People, but I also wanted to keep them visible to patrons searching specifically for those books.

I thought a lot about extracting specific social issues, like education, and whether to name historical events instead of using date ranges - I didn't want to be overly U.S.-centric, but I needed to acknowledge the location of our campus and local interests and assumptions in terms of searching for topics related to government and war.


I could apologize for problematic areas for paragraphs, but ultimately I looked at the collection, grouped them as logically as I could for the students on my campus, and then I fit each book into a sub-category. I tried not to over-think it (because it is intellectually interesting to see how many connections a given book might have), and just quickly make a decision - where would the student be most likely to look for this information? When I really couldn't commit, I would ask a few of my student aides to give me feedback.

Island of Misfit Books Pile

Eventually, I was able to categorize almost all of the books, and when I encountered really tricky ones, I put them in an I Don't Know Yet pile (pictured above). You may have noticed that I did end up with More to Explore in Social Studies and More to Explore in STEM categories, because there were a few outliers (a book about roadkill, a book about exploring different mysteries in science, and so forth) that defied the existing categories.

Eventually, every book belonged to a category, but none of them were stickered yet.

Let's Talk Labels

I spent the most time going back and forth about which sub-categories would exist, but I spent the second most amount of time trying to find the most durable, most clear, least expensive, least time-consuming solution to creating, adding, and maintaining nonfiction genre stickers.

Before I created any designs, I spent a long time pricing various label packages and sizes, and I also looked at printing options. I wanted to know the price per page and amount of labels per printed page, because that would also inform my sub-category decisions to some degree, too.

I ended up selecting one-inch square Avery labels, and because it was cheaper to buy them in bulk and I wanted to have extras on hand for new book orders, I bought a big package. They came in sheets of 48 per page.

I decided on these genre labels for my nonfiction section

Printing Labels

I explored many different options for printing labels, and in the end, my school district's print services organization ended up being the most helpful and the least expensive - far less than I expected. I did end up applying clear Demco label covers on top of each sticker, too, which was an additional expense.

I will also add that I also designed labels to genrefy my picture book section at my previous elementary campus library (that's a whole 'nother story), and that district's print service center was also super helpful - in fact, they were able to get whole sticker sheets and custom cut them for me - after I sent them the design in Google Docs, they even re-arranged the images for me to create one-inch squares in batches of 90 per page (legal size), so that I received pages of 90 stickers per page that were still stuck to the backing, with one-inch cuts to separate them, and no wasted borders around each sticker.

I created my sticker designs using Canva, with the exception of one original student design (which I adore), and I created a master Google Doc with each individual sticker design organized by neighborhood area categories. So there was one set for all the stickers in Recreation, and another table with all the sticker designs in STEM, for example.

I wanted to find perfect images to represent each category - again, I wanted to be inclusive and accurate, and I also wanted them to be simple, readily recognizable, and distinct from each other - so I spent a fair amount of time building images.  I wish I had good graphic design skills, but that's still on my not yet list.

Because the icons were not representative enough on their own, I needed to add text - after all, the Demco fiction genre labels do this, too - and it was tricky to shorten the names of my carefully-crafted sub-categories so they would fit on one-inch stickers. So I had to make decisions for that again, and then my table skills in Word and Google Docs were wanting, so an excessively generous parent volunteer formatted my images and text into one-inch pdf tables for me, in alphabetical order within each neighborhood. I used Lexend font for the labels, which was designed to be easy for people with dyslexia to read. I also knew that some library patrons were still learning English, so I hoped the symbols would be helpful indicators, even if the text wasn't useful to some users.

I was able to send those pdf design files with the genre sticker icons and text (along with several back-and-forth emails) to my district print services office, and inter-office mailed the Avery labels I purchased to them (with all my directions and email references lovingly - desperately? - rubber-banded to the package).

This is my student-designed genre sticker for Legendary Beings. Her first design was a little blurry, and when I gently asked if she could clarify it a little, she smiled and asked, "Have you ever seen a Nessie photo that wasn't blurry?" This will always be my favorite label.

Numbers
I've skipped over a step, which is that before I could send all the labels to the printer, I needed to know how many pages of each design I would need, and for that, I needed to know about how many books were in each sub-category. It was a little too complicated to make more than one design per page (and that would have created a mess later when we needed to find a single sticker from the files). I didn't want to have to place another order right away since it was time-consuming, but I didn't want a million extras of every design in case I needed to change some down the road, either.

It was so helpful to have sorted and taped the books into categories already at this stage, because I had a strong handle on how many books I had per category. I was able to make pretty good decisions about how many pages of each design to order, with a comfortable (but not excessive) cache of leftover stickers for each category.

Sticker Time
It took about 3-5 days for the district print center to print and deliver all those genre labels, and then, because the books were already color-coded with tape, it was easy to add the genre sticker just above the traditional Dewey label for each sub-category, and cover each with a clear label protector.

Sadly, a few of the traditional labels in almost every category had been applied two inches from the spine bottom long before I arrived, instead of one inch, like most of the rest of the books. In those cases, I decided to reverse the genre sticker placement, instead of going an additional inch higher up on the spine. At some point I can go back and replace both stickers on each of the affected books, but for now, it's still clear where each book belongs, and you can still read the titles on the spines (it's just not as clean looking).

I know, I know. I want to re-align those books and travel back in time - or forward in time - to fix the traditional spine label sticker placement so that all those survival genre stickers can line up in happy uniformity.

While I'm acknowledging missteps, I also realized early on that when I added centered text to the one-inch labels, you would not be able to read the full word - or even the beginning of the word - when the label curved around thinner books, as seen in the photo above. The icons are easy enough to recognize for users, even when the words aren't fully visible on each book, so I think it was the right decision.

And Yes, There Was More Weeding
I tried not to make drastic changes as we (student library aides, parent volunteers, and I) applied the genre sticker labels and clear label protectors to our sorted books. However, I did find more that I discarded from the collection, and there were a few that I re-categorized into different sub-categories as I worked. Because I was doing that decision-making, I asked volunteers to remove the color-coded masking tape after the genre stickers were added, instead of removing the tape as I went. To be completely honest, there are probably at least six more boxes of books that could be discarded and no students would miss them, but it's an ongoing process.

We went through a lot of label protectors, but it was worth it

Stickers Applied, Time to Move the Books . . . Or Is It?
At this stage, the books had genre stickers and most were together on the shelves with temporary signage, but not ordered into logical adjacent sections. I could have changed their sublocations in the catalog at this stage to reflect their new positions, but I knew there might be some changes along the way, so I waited to change the sublocations until the last step. Instead, I opted to physically move the books, now that they were stickered. (Full disclosure - this was actually a messy process that happened for some books before other books were stickered - I'll explain why just below.)

Location, Location, Location
I had been experimenting extensively with different configurations, based on the number of sub-categories and the number of books in each sub-category, or genre. Early on, when were still applying masking tape, I used small sticky notes at the top of each shelf to brainstorm where each section would go, but at that step we were still weeding and didn't know exactly how many books would belong to each category.

I also really wanted sub-categories to be logically placed so that similar things were adjacent as much as possible. After all, that was one of my main reasons for ditching Dewey, so I wanted to improve the set-up. However, it was complicated by the physical space and the possible connections. I won't give you every example, but here are just a few:
I wanted plants to be near both animals and weather, and weather to be near ecosystems, and I wanted weather to be near outer space (because of earth's revolution and seasons).
I wanted food and cooking to be near crafts, and I wanted inventions & experiments and coding & technology to be near crafts, too.
I wanted survival (health) and outdoor adventure (recreation) to be near each other.
I wanted architecture and landmarks to be near visual arts, but also near life around the world.

I also wanted to have each sub-category organized - at least loosely - into the "neighborhood zones" or larger categories I established early on.

Another consideration was the popularity of particular book topics with patrons and the space for traffic flow in that area; I've yet to see students crowd around the physics or medicine books with the same zeal they crowd around the sports and Minecraft books, so some categories lend themselves to narrower aisles and some need more space and good supervisory sight lines.

Juggling all of those variables was tricky. In addition to experimenting with physically moving some books into sections and adjusting sticky notes in the space, I also created digital maps and experimented with index cards to try different configurations.

Each index card represents a different sub-category so I could map where those books would physically be located within the nonfiction section

Truly, if you're still reading and with me, I shouldn't have any anxiety about revealing the details of this extensive process, but I know it's a lot. We're almost done, though.
In the foreground, these index cards represent 4 shelves per case on the front and back sides of 4 bookcases. Overlapping cards mean that two smaller topic categories are shared on one shelf.

This is one draft of the color-blocked neighborhood areas for my shelf configuration, with the location of each sub-category of books written in text within each neighborhood

Eventually, decisions were made and the books were physically moved to their sections, and I'd like to say we lived happily ever after, but the truth is, I made different decisions and moved some of the books again later. I wasn't terribly surprised that this was necessary, but I did rather wish I hadn't made semi-permanent signage before I thought of a better physical arrangement and had to re-create the signage, too.

Signage is Everything
I was hoping to avoid a big expense with additional display stands, so once our books were in their new locations, I tried some smaller acrylic display signs. My idea was that each stand would be located at the right edge of each shelf, with an enlarged genre icon and label that matched the sticker one each book in that section.

Small acrylic stand - good specific signage about related topics, but wouldn't withstand the weight of fallen books if it live at the right edge of each shelf

Row of smaller acrylic stands that I tried on the tops of shelves - it might be the angle of these stands, but they were just too hard to see, so I opted for bigger signs instead

It seemed like a really good idea, because the signage could include "See also" information that could direct visitors to explore other sections. For example, if you were looking at U.S. Government and Voting, you might "See also: U.S. Presidents," or "See also: Then and Now: 1620 - 1788 - U.S. Revolution."

I bought enough of these small acrylic stands to try them on one side, and I anchored them with small sticky putty dots, but they didn't work. Maybe it's the slanted stand angle, but they are too difficult to read clearly. Also, it was clear that they would be too lightweight (if books fell over) and in the way at the end of each shelf, where I planned to display front-facing featured books for each section.

While we're discussing signage, these yellow signs at the top were NF signs when I got to this library. You can see that the shelves are tall, making it tricky to read details from below.
This was after an early round of weeding, so you can see it's still pretty crowded on every shelf, but we're moving toward a 75% full shelf with at least one front-facing book on each end

Temporary working "signage" - first some sticky note brainstorming, and then some temporary typed labels above each shelf to help users navigate while we were transitioning books from Dewey to genres

In the end, I decided I'd need to use full page acrylic display stands at the top of each bookcase.
I put the color-coded neighborhood label at the top of each sign (for example, Health, or Recreation), and then I noted what was located on the top shelf, second shelf, third shelf, and bottom shelf.
I included the genre sticker icons on this sign to help users easily identify each topic.

I also clarified which topics were part of a section - for example, what topics were included in the Cells & Genes sub-category, as well as related information users might find elsewhere in the library, like "See also: Health - Medicine."

This was the signage I decided on - full display stands with a description of each shelf. You can still see two different temporary signage attempts in this photo as we experimented with location and signage options.

Another view of signage - this one in the STEM section. The top and second shelves are both about weather, and the tornado icon on the sign matches the genre sticker on those books.
The third shelf has books about energy sources, and the bottom one is about man-made disasters. Adjacent shelves include books about plants and ecosystems (weather), physics (energy), and transportation (disasters). It's useful to have the flexibility to put those similar topics near each other on top or bottom, or side to side, without be restricted to numeric order.

In my library, it is still tricky to read the signs on the tops of shelves that are 5 shelves tall, so I'm including thin strips of signage above each shelf (they include the icon, the sub-category title, and some "includes" information, but the "see also" details don't fit).

Updating the Catalog
I went back and forth about adding all the sub-category stickers as sub-locations in the catalog (my school uses Destiny), or whether I should use the larger area neighborhood designations. I decided that the more specific sub-location - the one that matched the sticker - would be clearer for library users. For example, if you wanted a book about Jonas Salk, you might not know if that would be found in Notable People, Inventors, or Medicine. If it just said Health in the catalog, you still might check Physical Health instead of Medicine for a book about vaccine development. Providing the specific genre sticker topic category as the sub-location in the catalog seemed like the clearest thing to do for users, so that was the next step: scanning every book and setting the sub-location to match the book's genre sticker.

Shelving within Genres
I originally planned to organize the books alphabetically by author's last name within each genre, since the first three letters are already on the traditional spine label, under the Dewey number. That would be familiar to student library aides and adult volunteers, since it matches the process in fiction, and it would easily allow catalog searchers to put their hands on an individual title. I haven't gotten to that step yet - mostly because my students typically browse the shelves instead of starting with catalog searches for nonfiction, but also because most of my sub-categories are only one shelf long, and those are pretty easy to scan quickly.

My largest categories are WWII. Social Issues, Outer Space, Other Sports, Mammals, and Poetry, so it is a little more time-consuming to find specific books within those sections. I'm still thinking about whether alphabetizing by author is helpful to users, or whether simply grouping books together by sticker is workable for most users most of the time. 

That's it - the mechanics and decision-making process. As of this writing, there are still twelve more sub-categories to scan to update the catalog to the correct sub-locations. I continue to tweak signage, and I have been using different activities with students to familiarize them with the new nonfiction section.

Eighth graders had nonfiction book tastings, and later they practiced discussion skills based on selected nonfiction books.
Sixth and seventh graders toured the nonfiction sections in a musical-no-chairs rotation, then stopped, examined selected books, and worked to "sell" them to other students nearby.
Sixth graders collaborated to create nonfiction book commercials for our library, too - and through these and other activities, we are building a new capacity for using the nonfiction nook.

Students pause to showcase nonfiction books to each other, discovering topics and familiarizing themselves with new sections of our library

I hope our nonfiction circulation statistics will tell a successful story about nonfiction reading on our campus this year, but I also know that information is only part of the story. Students regularly visit and browse the nonfiction section now - and they often pick books from nonfiction shelves and sit and read them before replacing them on the shelf (usually in the correct spot, thanks to our trusty stickers).

I also hope this information will help librarians with questions about how to get started with this process - even if this isn't the process that would work best for you.

And because every librarian enjoys a good Adventures in Weeding picture, I'll end with a few of the treasures that came to the end of their stay in our nonfiction section this fall.

I admit - this one intrigued me. Who doesn't love a book about words?