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Hi, everyone! This is my late “hit” about shelving fiction by genre as opposed to using genre labels within the collection. The overall consensus was to intershelve, so I’m planning on relabelling all genres and integrating my mysteries into the regular fiction (they're now shelved separately). Thanks to everyone who responded! Beth Meister, Librarian Yeshiva of Central Queens, NY librarybeth@yahoo.com I decided to intershelve all but the Mystery and SF as they are quite large. I use the stickers. I found that when I shelved the Newbery separately, no one used them. I am thinking about shelving chapter books separately. I use the stickers for myself, not just the students. That way I can pull out the genres easily. I have grades 6-8, but if I had lower grades, I'd still shelve all fiction books alphabetically by author. That is standard procedure and the way they are most likely to find books in the public library. I don't want them to be at a disadvantage by learning it the correct way. I recommend that you keep all your fiction together, alpha by author. Use the genre stickers to help students find a particular kind of fiction, but keep them all together. I am a strong believer that the more we divide the collection, the harder it is for patrons to find books. You need to decide what is your goal. Ours is to create life long library users. To do that we need to be sure that we follow standard library procedure even in our shelving so that students will know how to use all libraries (not just ours.) Standard library shelving is fiction arranged by last name of the author. If you decide to pull out separate sections, make sure your catalog entry reflects this. I feel you punish a person who knows how to use the catalog and wants to do so, when the books are not where they are supposed to be. I do not separate any of them out but use the genre stickers. It gets too difficult to look in several different places. IMHO We shelve all fiction together, but use lots of labels. The children learn to search the shelves for the labels - just like our local public library. I feel that keeping it similar to the local public library helps the children when they get to that library and need to search the shelves. I feel very strongly about not separating genres into special sections. You have already made it easy for students to identify different types of books, but isolated sections actually make it harder for them to learn about library arrangement. (Is this book Fic Le in the mystery, sci fi, Newbery, or "normal fiction" section?) Plus browsing allows them to try a different type of book than they would normally read. One of our state academic standards is to have students identify and self select different genres. Just my thoughts. I was the one who asked the question about reshelving the NF. I separated the Newberys and Caldecotss my last year at my last school. It seemed to work well and it was easier to do the Newbery and Caldecott units. The teachers liked it too. Also, when parents came to look for a good story or higher reading level, it was easy to direct them. It also gave students an alternative when they were looking for an AR book. I would not consider shelving the fiction by genre. It will take longer to shelve and might not be consistent with the public library. What I do is put the genre stickers on them and make sure the book's genre is listed under a subject tag in the MARC record. When the patron wants a list of 'Fantasy' books all they have to do is type enter 'fantasy'. I know if you don't already have it this way it can be time-consuming. I'm at a new school this year and have to do the same thing, but, personally, I think it's worth it. I have started work this year in a High school 7- 12 where the librarians decided last year to shelve the books by genre. I have probably done about one third of them this year and thought I had finished yesterday when my assistant quenched my excitement by telling me there was a box of easy readers in the literacy teacher's area not yet allocated. It was a job I thought fairly pointless and many books do not fit a genre. The joke is - if it does not fit anywhere put it in relationships. I find it hard to locate a novel for a student as I have to use the catalogue computer whereas in my previous schools I just went to the shelves if I knew the author. The other librarians say borrowing of novels is up but we do not have any definite statistics yet. I just returned all collections to the shelf. I started at the 1/2 year last year and returned in the fall. My experience is that students become dependent on a grouping. I found kids who liked The Giver but had no idea Lowry had written anything else. I use stickers for awards but they are no longer grouped. I have taught several lessons on using the on line catalog using examples of popular types of books and titles. When students ask for a book we look it up together. I teach finding books and it has worked. Also doing shelf reading was difficult when little collections were all over the place. I prefer to shelve them according to the system I try to teach the kids. Under the best circumstances, the teacher tells me ahead of time, what they'll need for book reports, and I pull them for a fascinating booktalk to that class just before checkout. At a previous K - 6 site, I had all my regular (hardcover) fiction organized by author (no extra genre labels)on my standard shelving, and a separate stand-alone bookcase with my paperbacks organized by type. For example, the biographies had a B on (a dot on) the spine, Historical Fiction, HF, mysteries, M, etc. This made it very easy for student helpers to reshelve the paperbacks according to genre. I also had two rotating towers for regular paperback fiction. I found that organizing my PAPERBACKS this way was easy and because we had good support of book fairs, I was able to stretch my book budget with paperbacks and have plenty of each assigned genre (and possibly several copies of popular titles) without taking up a lot of space. I spent regular book budget money on the hardbound versions of the award winners, notable titles, and nonfiction. I also bought paperbacks for "trendy" topics like current sports heroes and personalities. Usually it's not worth spending money on hardcover versions since the names are obsolete well before a hardbound book wears out. Another idea that anyone can use is quite simple: use your opac to create a bibliography of whatever genre you need and print it out. Then simply post it. The kids can just look over the list and check the shelves for the titles by author. Since I have only one computer (my circ station computer)in my tiny library I have no other options (other than genre labeling which I don't have time for), but anyone who needs to reserve their computers for more important searching could do the same. And the kids should learn how to find the book by author (or by Dewey number). I am new to my school. I previously worked at a beautiful middle school where books were shelved by genre. I found this was great for browsing but a pain when looking for a specific book. Many times books were difficult to classify into a genre causing other problems. In my new school I decided to keep all fiction together but to add genre labels. Its worked for me. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! 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