GEN: rearranging fiction

[Marian Mackey <MKMackey@AOL.COM>]

Dear Friends,

This is a great group.  My two dumb questions were answered quickly,
satisfactorily, and with professional friendliness.  Now I wish to ask a
serious question that in some circles is viewed as heresy.  I'm moving my
library this summer into new facilities and plan to rearrange my fiction
collection from straight alpha-by-author to a bookstore-type genre
arrangement.  If any of you fine folks have done this or thought of doing it,
what categories should I use?

So far my list includes: Mystery/Suspense/Horror; Science Fiction/Fantasy;
Historical Fiction; Westerns; Romance; Adventure/Survival; Animals; Sports;
Short Stories.

Should I have a distinct category for multi-cultural books or shelve them in
the other categories?  What should I do with books which don't seem to fit
any of the categories (e.g., Dickens)?  What should I do with the
coming-of-age young adult novels?  (Make one big category for all, or
separate into Family, School, Friendship, etc.?)

Second part of the problem:  How to mark the books for ease in shelving, and
how to mark the records in the online catalog so we can locate books on the
shelves by title or author.  I've got a few fuzzy ideas here, but need some
advice.

My library serves grades 9 through 12 and we use Winnebago CIRC/CAT (DOS
version now but soon to be Spectrum, I think).

I would appreciate any and all advice you can give me.  I'm starting to get
butterflies about the whole idea.  Will I end up with one huge, unmanageable
mess?

Thank you all for your great ideas - past, present, and future.

Marian Mackey, Librarian             Knowledge is of two kinds:
Perkiomen Valley High School      we know a subject ourselves, or
509 Gravel Pike                            we know where we can find
Graterford, PA  19426                   information upon it. - S. Johnson
fax: 610-489-1921
email: mkmackey@aol.com