-Written by Dr. Mandi Cox, DMS Librarian

In May of 2019, Dawkins student population was at an all time high. We were out of classroom space and any available space was being utilized. In June, a little more than a quarter of the library was converted into a classroom. 

You know what they say about lemons…make lemonade. So I did. I was having to move a large portion of my fiction collection which left me with the dilemma of where to put all of these books. I wanted to keep as many of the books as possible.  I was unable to do anything with the books until construction was completed so this left me with time to plan. 

Jennifer LaGarde, a school library influencer, wrote a blog post about genrification of the school library that I had read a while back. Then in July, I attended Scholastic’s Reading Summit in Orlando and listened to a presentation by Andy Plemmons, a school librarian in Georgia, which included genrification. I was able to talk to him after the presentation and got a little more information.  One of the members of my literacy team attended the summit with me and we were able to discuss the pros and cons of this for Dawkins. We ran the idea by a few other Language Arts teachers and decided this would be a good time to make changes.  

The process of genrefying the library is not something to go into lightly.  It is a process.  Since my books were already in disarray and needing to find new homes on the shelves, a plan of action needed to be made regardless of how I shelved the books.  It took almost 2 months during August and September of 2019 to get everything in place.  

Some things that I had to consider were: 

1) What categories are most popular for Dawkins’ population?  These are the categories we decided on: realistic fiction, scary, humor, sports, mystery, fantasy, classics, science fiction, adventure/action, historical fiction, historical fiction -war (World War II fiction is one of our most requested areas), and young adult (because there is such a difference between beginning of the year 5th graders and end of the year 8th graders, these books are a little more mature).

2) Some books could potentially fall into more than one category. How do we classify them? I used Follett’s Titlewave website to help me identify the genre and potential tags for each book.  I also looked at where we had fewer books and sometimes assigned them to a category.

3) Once I physically sorted the books, how was I going to label them? Demco is one company that carries a variety of genre labels. We already had some so we used them. You can always make your own which I did to signify books in the historical fiction section pertaining to war.

4) How will each section fit on the shelves? I looked to see how large each section was and determined where to start based on shelf space versus the quantity of books in each genre. This summer, we moved a bookcase and I made some adjustments to the fiction section.  

5) My fiction collection needed to be weeded.  How was I going to consider weeding these books? Because of the fact that I lost square footage, I knew some books would need to go. I decided to weed based on the care of the book, age of the book, date of last check out, and number of copies of a book.

6) I had to create signs for each section. Originally I created posters to hang on the walls or at the end of the book cases. I’m making small changes to this over time.

7) I had to make adjustments in the catalog.  

8) This is a huge undertaking. I had to recruit help. Some teachers came in and helped me. Extra hands helped with the sorting, but also helped in the strategizing and by-in. 

The students currently at Dawkins do not know what our library looked like prior to this change so I can’t ask them to compare and tell me what they like better. However, I have talked to a variety of students…the ones who are in the library on a regular basis and the ones who only come in with their classes.  They have said they like the genres. It helps them find the books they are interested in faster.  Sometimes they only focus on a particular author like Rick Riordan whose list of works is long. By seeing other books in the fantasy section, they are more willing to branch out rather than read the same books over and over. Teachers have commented that they like the reorganization of the library because it made it more cozy and some have worked to genrefy their classroom libraries to match the school library.

Even though we started genrefying the library in the summer of 2019, it is an ongoing process.  We are extending the genres by creating resource lists based on book tags. Students can look at resource lists based on interests like bullying, mythology, and “girl drama.” We’ve just begun this process and will work on it as the year progresses.  All of this is in the hopes that our students find the materials they are most interested in while helping them to become independent learners.

Below are the resources I used to help with the genrefication process. 

Jennifer LaGarde’s Blog Post: https://www.librarygirl.net/post/genrefying-your-collection-without-changing-call-numbers

Jennifer LaGarde’s Google Doc with step by step instructions:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GDdppgtkC8LLcBGe8AZV1zChc7V1IdOV1sQvnarnigs/edit?usp=sharing