GENRE SPLITTING FICTION
IN SCHOOL LIBRARIES:
A Survey of Opinions

To: oztl_net@listserv.csu.edu.au

Date: March 28, 2000

I've been reflecting on the relative merits of splitting the fiction section into genres. I thought that possibly this might make shelf browsing a less daunting task for some of the library users. The kids often ask "Where are the war stories/horror/romance/etc"?????

I get the feeling that I'm paddling the wrong way up the stream with many of these kids when I start talking OPACs. By the time I've helped them locate something that might have been of interest to them in the catalog, they've pretty much lost interest in borrowing anything, so when I see the eyes glaze over we browse the shelves together. Very bonding, but not very practical, time management wize.

I recall a recent posting here that mentioned that "genre splitting" was undertaken in public libraries some time ago...but can't remember the other contents of the post, other than to say the practice had been discontinued??? Except for the time consuming task of having to re-classify the whole fiction section and create a whole swag of new "locations" (eg F-H for Fiction -Humour, F-R for Fiction-Romance, etc), are there any other disadvantages? I guess that works with more than one genre (eg humourous war romance stories) will create a problem too????

Does anyone see any advantages?

Amanda Credaro
Teacher Librarian
Loyola Library,
Christ Catholic College
Mt Druitt, Sydney.

We have been thinking about this as well. We are a secondary school library and have decided to put stickers on the spine denoting the genre. Some books will have several stickers. We have bought some commercially produced stickers and the rest we have made by taking free clipart from the internet and writing the genre name underneath. These are produced in Word. I have been happier with the stickers we have produced ourselves.

We have not done the whole collection yet but are only part of the way through. I think it has made it easier for the students to find books to their liking eventhough the collection is still in a strict A-Z order. Hope this is of use.

Susan Zipfinger 
SCEGGS Darlinghurst

I use genre stickers from RAECO. They have a wide range to go on the spines eg. saturn for sci -fi, castle for historical, tank for war stories etc. It make sit easier for them to browse but still makes them look at other titles and not just stick to one genre.

 Jenny Stubbs
jstubbs@gil.com.au 

Keep in mind that genre access should increasingly be available through your library's OPAC if you are using SCIS records for fiction. SCIS have been assigning genre heading such as 'Love stories',' Horror stories' and 'Science fiction' since late 1997. A new genre heading 'War stories' was introduced late last year and SCIS are open to further suggestions for genre headings.

If you are using SCIS records do a search on some of these genre headings in your catalogue and see what records come up. Probably the easiest way to provide wider genre access to your collection is to add SCIS genre heading to fiction records without them, eg pre 1998 SCIS records.

The worry is if, ...[SCIS records are not available] ...In that instance I would still favour adding genre heading to catalogue records rather than reshelving your fiction into genre sections. Reshelving is an absolute pain. Some works could belong to 2 or more sections, some won't fit logically into any of your chosen genres, etc.

The quickest and dirtiest short term solution is to buy some commercial genre stickers and put them on the spine of appropriate works. Your users will probably quite like this and it will buy time to develop a more satisfactory long term solution.

Ashley Freeman
Charles Sturt University 

This may be a nightmare also but why not create genre lists of authors and/or titles then students may use those to direct them to the shelf.

These can be colourful posters hung in prominent places in the fiction/reading section. Bookmarks or leaflets could be distributed. Or have a lesson on finding fiction on the OPACS - using subject (if your OPAC works that way). This may be impractical because one school I worked at did not classify its fiction beyond just fiction (OASIS). Though if your OPAC already utilises this - a refresher lesson devoted to fiction genres may be useful. If you make the lesson interesting enough ( perhaps every successful user gets a new pencil, pen, whatever) it might work.

Donna Boxsell 
webdot@eisa.net.au 

My local public library had split fiction and shelved according to genres. I actually found it a pain in the neck because they only put some items into the split sections and left others in the rest of the collection. I have put a lot of subject headings on the database for fiction and I find this works OK, but I am in a primary school where there is a fairly high academic standard. I have also made lists of titles for some genres. I chose titles because I wanted children to use the catalogue to find what the resources. Our Year 6 & 7 children follow a year long literature program that is genre based. What I have done works well for us.

Helen 
hmcd0@moggillss.qld.edu.au 

Why not use identifying stickers? When I still had time to go to the local public library I remember choosing whodunnits from a coloured sticker on their spine. You can buy stickers with different "genres" eg Aussie and aborig. flags, question mark for mystery. It's also quite easy to design and print your own using a colour inkjet and sheets of avery or similar labels. I do it for computer software (which is stored in video cases) so the teachers can differentiate between videos and CDROMS at a glance.

reSue P sueted@ans.com.au

I've noticed that public libraries have stopped doing this, probably due to the combined nature of some books and too many areas etc. Raceo have some good pictures stickers to put on the spine of the book advertising its genre. Kids can look for these. Also an idea might be to pull off the shelves one genre and put them in a nearby area advertising that they'll be there for say 2 weeks. Rotate doing different genres, an instant display.

Edwina Clark 
Humpybong State School 
Ernest St, Margate , Qld.4034 
ph.(07)32639861 
fax (O7) 38832482 
elclark@bigpond.com 

Perhaps you could create bibliographies of the genres, listing the authors, and have these at the circ desk. Then the kids can just take one and search the shelves by author as usual. Seems a lot less work. I would rather spend time bonding with the kids while looking for books, than bonding with the shelves while I tried to find where returns went!

Barbara

barbara@dynamite.com.au

Have you thought of having a bit both ways? My local public library has a shelf for each of three genres, but also uses the genre labels available from Raeco and once the particular shelf is full the other titles are interfiled. In my library we have bay end display units used the same way. Speaking as a mystery fan I enjoy the little red detective hats and the kids can easily identify the fantasy dragon and the thriller gun.

Rosalind

kentwell@mhs.vic.edu.au

We put special extra spine labels on which indicate genre - these are available from suppliers like RAECO. I also have about 3 spinners which I use to display groups of genres - Teenage/Romance; Horror/SF/Fantasy; Historical Fiction/Other cultures/General; plus another which I call my Quick Read spinner which isn't genre based. Hope this helps.

Sue Cartwright 
T/L Adelaide High School 

What about the books that don't have an obvious genre, where do you put those? In the I don't really know shelves?

 Lee Cutler 
Teacher Librarian 
Macintyre High School 
P O Box 16 
Inverell NSW 2360 

Another option is the public libraries way of marking out the different genres with a coloured dot.

Michele Sacco 
Belmore Boys 
michelesacco@yahoo.com 

I did this at my previous school and it was FANTASTIC. I started with just having a few series separated from the rest and found these were the only things borrowed.

So I bit the bullet and got stickers and did all the reclassification in the catalogue and got great signs - it was wonderful.

Borrowing went up dramatically and I worked with the English department to organise wide reading units of work based around the genres so that by the end of Year 10 all students had to read from all genres - no book boxes or lists to organise - just go to the right shelves. It suited the users there - they had difficulty with the language and hated reading, so anything to make book selection easier for them (and me!) was great. Book stores organise their books by genre - why can't we? At my present school we have a very different clientele - many actually want to read. I find I do a lot of book selection with staff and students and I really miss my old genre split collection. Here we are going for an inbetween solution and putting a genre sticker on the spine for easy identification. Space is a big problem here also, so I don't think we could go the whole hog. If it suits your clientele - do it!

Sue Bognar 
Technology Librarian 
Moriah College 
Queens Park Road 
Bondi Junction NSW 2022 
sbognar@moriah.nsw.edu.au 

I have just completed my two week prac in my local public library. At first the fiction seemed to be divided into so many categories, I couldn't imagine how anyone found a title they were looking for after locating it on the OPAC.

There was hard back fiction (on shelves and alphabetical), general paperback fiction (on stands and loosely alphabetical, e.g A-D) and genres, each on the appropriate stand in no alphabetical order at all, romance, crime, horror, western, thriller, etc, but each with a graphic sticker on the spine.

Then there was large print fiction, shelf for returned fiction not yet shelved...it went on. They also did this with certain non-fiction, there was a whole section of 920s called "Biography" separated from the main shelves, also non-fiction paperbacks on stands loosely divided into genres.

I found it very confusing at first, then I realised the only person having trouble with finding things (in fiction) was me! Probably because I was coming from a librarian angle instead of a customer angle. The regular users knew the system and obviously found it convenient to browse a stand for the type of book they liked. I think this has rather less application in the school setting, but certainly the principle is worth bearing in mind, especially for those occasional or reluctant readers who will read e.g. a sci-fi or fantasy novel at a pinch if it's easy to find but certainly won't spend time studying catalogues. It's the old chestnut of whether we want them to understand and apply the processes involved in achieving their desired end or whether we are so glad to have them reading we'll do anything to encourage it.

Good luck in your final decision!

Rose. 
rosaleen@one.net.au 

What about the idea of just sticking coded coloured labels on the spines of books? These are available commercially with "Horror" etc logos on them. This would avoid most of the labour and other problems associated with your idea.

Denise Hallahan 
De La Salle College, Ashfield 

Library suppliers sell genre stickers that can be placed on the spine of books to indicated their subject. Perhaps you could use these rather than redoing the whole library. That way the children could browse the shelves and look for the 'ghost' sticker for scary stories. They might even find something else that they like at the same time. Personally I use coloured spots in my library. Yellow are reference books that are intershelved with the others, but the children can't borrow them (this is mainly a space consideration), etc.

Cheryl Keane T/L 
St Bernards Botany NSW 

I understand your dilemma. We have made up genre signs and rotate a display on the paperback stands. Eg. Humorous stories sign and we put all the Griffiths, Jennings etc stuff on that stand for about 4 weeks. It seems to work reasonably well but I am a sucker for the individual approach with various students .... I would be concerned about the genre splitting of the collection because of all those social issues novels that have dual and triple themes.

Ruth Turpin 
Echuca high School 

I would recommend other strategies such as stickers on books for those who browse. For others it is useful to have genre bibliograhies as well as shortlists of the most recommended reads in these genres. I keep copies of these at the reference desk so I can provide an instant guide for the students. In a past life I set up Ribit shelves with books shelved in categories. It was quite a quest finding books .

Heather Ahern 
heather.ahern@cceggs.act.edu.au 

I can relate to your problem - have you thought about putting those funny little labels with various symbols on the spine? I know there are hearts for romance, smiley for humour, would there be a gun for war? I think Raeco have them. I presume you have subject headings like War - fiction, Love - fiction etc. The thought of the amount of work generated by your idea of splitting the fiction is very daunting.

When I first came to this library I had the (brilliant?) idea of creating a junior fiction sub section that I called smiley fiction because I put a smiley label on those little skinny junior novels. It works okay but there are enough drawbacks that would make me think again about doing it next time.

Louise Cluff
Primary Teacher-Librarian
SCEGGS Primary
215 Forbes St
Darlinghurst 2010
Phone: 02 9332 1133
Fax: 02 9332 1858
e-mail: louise@sceggs.nsw.edu.au

I inherited a library that had been divided into nine or so genres, (Ghost, Animal, Science fiction, Short stories, Romance etc.) and it did have some advantages, but I have now re-integrated to two sections, senior and general fiction, and prefer this system. While having all the romances together makes it easy for the "romantics", for example, to "pig out" on their preferred genre, they can still easily find them under the subject heading using OASIS or Alice for Windows, and while they are looking for the romance of their choice they might chance on something unexpected that they borrow, enjoy and which leads them off in a new reading direction. That sort of serendipity is out if books are pre-sorted.

Also, many of the best books don't neatly fit a genre, so you wind up with one section, general, much bigger than any of the others, which sort of defeats the purpose. I would far rather spend time with the kids, helping them choose, and helping them to refine their search skills than fiddling about forcing books to fit arbitrary genre areas.

I did some research not long ago which showed that an important part of their reading for students was sharing with someone. The someone could be a parent, friend or teacher librarian, and if that someone is you, it can be a great chance to direct the kids from perhaps ordinary towards memorable reading experiences, or from one kind of "good" literature to another they may not otherwise have considered, not a bad thing. Sorry, that sounded a bit "preachy", but I have tried both and much prefer using subject headings and searches of OPACs to physically sorting into genres. Our kids haven't complained, either.

Incidentally, in my research I also asked students for their genre preferences and I used forty categories or genres - and found this fairly broad - it was still hard to fit some books in a category. Do you fancy 40 categories? The students really disliked some categories, but may well have enjoyed a book from a disliked category, except that they would never look in a disliked category for their recreational reading, so would miss broadening their horizons because of a name tag....

Robin Rasmussen TL, 
St Mary's College, 
Bloomfield Street, 
Gunnedah  2380.
e-mail robina@northnet.com.au 
or smcgdh@northnet.com.au 

I've never liked genre splitting myself and I'm a great reader of genre fiction myself (science fiction). Even in my local public library, which does do so, partially, I tend to go to the "Fiction" rather than the "Science Fiction" section if I want to read a new sf book. At one time we experimented with genre spine labels at school, but abandoned the practice as a waste of effort.

Jon Noble
TL Glendale High

Why not use Raeco subject spine labels so that your shelving stays the same (and follows standard library practice) but the kids can find what they want by browsing along the spines. It works well for us.

Maureen Mann
camaden@one.net.au

Re genre splitting:

1. Spine labels for mystery, family, war etc can be used effectively;

2. Try sitting down to categorise a bunch of books some time and see how long it takes. Using the spine labels means you can do the ones that are easy and leave those that aren't. (Try labelling Wuthering Heights - romance ? supernatural ? family saga ?);

>3. Reader's advising is one of my favourite things about being a librarian (teacher or not). It involves asking questions about prior reading experience and preferences and matching this to my knowledge of authors, the collection and the stage the young person is at;

4. Books are just not so black and white and having lived with collections already categorised and being given the task of putting a label on every book, I find it very limiting. Don't you find that working in libraries you discover many books you would never have sought out ? I do and hope young library users do too from time to time.

NAME WITHHELD BY REQUEST

In my library I am planning to do this:

1. Create or find posters that explain each genre. I saw some good posters at a school once, but I don't know what supplier they came from.

2. Display a list of these genres and next to each an allocated colour.

3. Stick appropriate coloured dots on the spines of the fiction.

This way all the fiction is shelved together as normal but, for example, all the ones with blue dots are science fiction. I think this helps with wide reading programs. It also helps you get to know your students. If someone is always borrowing 'blue dot science fiction', you can both share any new science fiction with them, and encourage them to try something else. They do this with the paperbacks at my local library. I like it because I can always find the fantasy (dark aqua). It's a dauting task at first, but once the existing titles are done, it's just one small step to add to processing.

Colleen Sims
leeny@ozemail.com.au

A possibility for identifying fiction genre on the shelves is to put different coloured dots on the books but still have the books in alphabetical order eg. red/War stories, green/Romance etc.

Another method would be to put spine labels with letters on the books eg W/war stories, R/romance. You would have a key list for students to follow.

Dennis Granlund

Catholic Education Office
Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn
Ph. 02-6234-5526
Fax 02-6234-5528 

At my previous school (7-12), we used the little picture spine labels supplied by Raeco, just for the most common genres (topics such as romance, fantasy, thrillers, mystery and detective, sci fi, short stories).

They were shelved in the normal run of fiction books. When we were asked about fantasy books, we could at least show them the labels and suggest that they cruised the shelves and checked any titles that displayed that label on their spine.

Of course there were some discrepancies in our allocations of genre, and we had to be careful not to get ridiculous (or "Anna Karenina" would end up with a heart on its spine!). But on the whole it did work quite well and quite simply and didn't take up too much more of our (already overfilled) time. We just began with the new material and always meant to go back and label the older stock, but i don't think it ever happened. It was a simple method, and I would still recommend it.

Let us know your decision.

Margaret
ridlandm@unihigh.vic.edu.au

Let me suggest an alternative that I have done and some of the public libraries also. Instead of splitting the collection , I have gone through the fiction and put the spine labels on that raeco sells. This way I also did some weeding and housekeeping on the database etc. This means that students can browse by author OR genres easily. I did it at my last 2 schools and know it works in secondary schools as it does in primary. This saves relocating books.

Robyn Alexander
Mater Maria College
Forest Rd
Warriewood
Ph 9997 7044
e-mail : principl@matermaria.nsw.edu.au 

The majority of respondants were in favour of shelving alphabetically, and adding genre stickers, for general school library use.

However, three of the respondents to date (Roseleen, Sue and Rose) have specifically addressed the issue of promoting literature for reluctant readers. This type of library user is frequently charactorised as being resistive to the usual finding aids (OPACs, lists of suggestions, bibliographies, etc).

Each month, I will dedicate a section of shelving to a genre display(hopefully selecting material that is a good example of that genre) and make that a "theme" in the library. I did this with Romance in the week prior to Valentine's Day, and it proved very popular (borrowing stats went through the roof that week). As the books are selected for the theme display, we will attach the stickers prior to their display.

I will keep further stats on how this effects borrowing before making any further decisions. If the stats show a high rate within a genre (the nightmare has now moved on from re-shelving to mathematical manipulations!), then I will give further consideration to re-shelving. If the theme displays do not effect overall rates for a six-month period, then I'll keep things as they are....