Genrefication...Beginning of Change

I've finished my third year as the librarian/media specialist at my school. Each year I have some of the same questions that come up. "Where can I find the mystery books?" "Where are the funny books?" Students come in to check out books and are looking for a specific genre of book to read. Well, I couldn't exactly tell them where they were because they were all spread out. Our books are organized by authors last name, not genre on the shelves.

So, I would help the student look for books in that genre and guide them to the shelf it would be on, but it was a task. As I kept getting these questions, ideas continued to flow through my head on how I could make it easier for our students. For the past two summers I've wanted to re-organize the library. There was always something going on and I wasn't able to get it done, unfortunately. This summer I'm going to make it happen!

I've done a lot of reading on how librarians went about reorganizing their libraries so their fiction books were organized by genre. There are some great ideas out there! I've taken notes, saved links, participated in Twitter chats, and so much more. The information is a bit cumbersome, but it is so helpful. It was helpful to know that I wasn't the only one looking to do this and that many librarians out there have already done this with their libraries.

I know the task of organizing the fiction books by genre is going to be a big one, but it's one I'm willing to take for our students on campus.

I'm still in the planning stages right now. I'm working on the genres that I want to organize the books in, how I'm going to label each book and then how I'm going to organize the shelves to best display the genres and the books.

To begin this task I've downloaded an EXCEL copy of our shelf listing from Destiny. This tells me every book I have in the library. As I work through the books I will make notes in the actual document so that I can keep track of books that go in each genre, and color code them as well.

Below are screen captures of the process and the steps I've gone through to get the shelf listing from Destiny.

I will also make note of catalog updates or changes I need to make in Destiny using this document. I'm hoping by going through this and keeping a digital copy it will make things easier for when I start to physically move the books in the library.

As this process moves forward I'm going to continue to document and keep track of what worked for me and what didn't work. I'm hoping there's a lot that does work.