Genre Feature Table- an easy addition to library lessons

I am lucky enough to see Middle School Humanities and English classes once per 8-day cycle for a 30 minute library lesson and book checkout.  This year, we added a genre feature table to our classroom area with the the hope of increasing checkout and introducing students to new books.
At the start of each library lesson, I book talk 4-5 books from the table and we discuss the featured genre.  For me, it's a great way to focus students and kick off our lesson.
This small addition to library time has been so successful that I have to re-stock the table after almost every lesson.
The featured genre for this week is: Sci Fi.

ECIS Library 2018

I just returned from a great conference in Chennai, India.  ECIS Library happens every three years and is some of the best PD for international librarians that I have experienced.  I met many people, learned a lot and now have a long "to-do" list of all sorts of fabulous ideas for the library!

I presented at ECIS Library this year on our nonfiction gentrification process for the MS/HS Library.  I have blogged about the process here.  If you would like the slide presentation, please let me know.  If you attended ECIS Library, the presentation and materials are in the shared Drive folder.

Here are a few photos of the workshop:

Library Signage

Our last step was to create signage for the new sections.  I wanted something that could be seen among all the colorful book covers as our current signs seemed to blend in.

After doing some searching online for signage, and realizing our school has a lot of spare chalkboard paint, I asked our team of carpenters to modify a design found online.  We used natural, untreated wood (both for cost savings and for the rustic look) and chalkboard paint.  Chalkboards make the section titles really stand out.

We were not able to put the chalkboard signs on the tall shelves without hitting the ceiling so I used a chalkboard background and printed posters to put in frames to keep with the chalkboard look.

We had about 40 signs made and our talented assistants learned to do chalk art via YouTube tutorials.  Here is our beautiful new library signage:

Creating Subsections

Now that we had all the books moved into their new sections, it was time to split the larger sections into subsections.  (Find our sections and subsections here.)  My amazing assistants did the initial split into subsections.  I then went through each subsection to make sure the books where where I wanted them and in many cases, created a new subsection or combined small sections.  New subsections of Teen Wellness, Education and Parenting, Artists, and Travel Writing emerged through this process.

We decided to keep the books in Dewey order within their subsection.  So that we know where to shelve a book, we put a sticker in the front with the subsection.  We also changed the location in the catalog to the section-subsection.  Here is an example of our destiny catalog entry:

(Yes, we have a Youtubers subsection!!)

And here is a subsection sticker in the front of a book from our History section:

This was one of the longest parts of the process, mostly because I looked at every book.  Once everything was in place, we created shelf labels and signage.  See my next posts for that.  Here are some photos of our Wellness section and subsections:

Changing Call Numbers

As we moved the books to new sections, we batch changed the call number prefix on the books as we went along. This helped us find books while we were in the process of moving because we knew whether a certain book was in its new location or still on the "Dewey shelves".

We decided to leave the Dewey number as is, both because the sections are still in Dewey order and because some day, a librarian coming into the school after me may hate that we dismantled Dewey and want to move it back in place.

The batch change to Music

Here are the new sections and the call number prefixes for Dewey:

SECTION	PREFIX	SECTION	PREFIX
War and Conflict	WAR	Paranormal	PARANORMAL
History	HISTORY	Modern Marvels	MARVELS
True Crime	CRIME	Business and Math	BUSINESS
Health	HEALTH	Science	SCIENCE
Wellness	WELLNESS	Animals	ANIMAL
Religion	RELIGION	Poetry	POETRY
Global Issues	GLOBAL	Literature	LITERATURE
Narrative	NARRATIVE	Myths and Legends	MYTH
Cooking and Food	FOOD	Travel and Geography	TRAVEL
Music	MUSIC	Biography	B
Art and Design	ART	Graphic Novels	COMIC
Sports	SPORTS	College Collection	COLLEGE
Fun and Games	GAMES	Bangladesh Collection	BC

Moving the Books

Once we had all the books labeled, we moved them to the new sections.  We counted a lot of shelves, made rough estimates of how many books we had for each section and went through several drafts of my not-so-fancy map until we found a set-up that worked for us:

First, we moved our audiobooks and DVD's to a back room; they no longer circulate often since we have video streaming (and no DVD players at our school).

Once we had some empty shelves, we moved our first section into those and slowly (one section at a time) moved each section as more shelves cleared.  The process went more smoothly than I thought it would and everything fit.  What luck!!

We kept everything in Dewey order in the sections, deciding not to split into subsections until me had moved everything.

Mr. Shoyab moving Realistic Fiction to its new location.

The new Narrative Nonfiction section.

 As we moved each section, we changed the call number prefix so we would know where to find books during the move.  See the next post for how to do this!

Labeling the books!

Our next step in genrefication was to label every nonfiction book in the collection.  We went shelf by shelf.  My awesome assistants accomplished this feat in about a month.

For some shelves, it was very easy to figure out:

The Cooking section was easy!

For other shelves, it was easy to figure out but we used a variety of different labels:

A variety of topics in the 000's!

Some topics where harder:

1.  How broadly do we define narrative nonfiction?

• We used a combination of how the book was labeled in Destiny and our own judgement.

2.  Should we split Heath into two sections? 

• Yes!  We ended up splitting this section into "Health" and created another section "Wellness"

3.  What section do books about ninjas go in?  

• After much discussion, we decided on crime because we have a subsection there for spies.  Sports and Fun & Games were also options.  It was a lot of discussion over our 3 ninja books.

Ninjas confuse us all.

And of course, there were the subsections we forgot about and added in as we went along:

• Psychology- we split our psycholgy books into strictly science (Science section) and self-help (Wellness Section). We did this on the advice of of the Psych teacher, who we also confused in the process!
• Philosophy- Wellness subsection.
• Photography- Art subsection
• Design- Art subsection
• Education- Wellness subsection
• Natural Disasters- Science subsection

Creating Nonfiction Labels

The next step in our nonfiction gentrification was creating labels for the books so we know which section they go in.  For our fiction section, we order our labels from Demco.

For nonfiction, we decided to create our own labels.  I designed our labels using LucidPress through my Google account.  I chose LucidPress because I have been using it to design other library materials since I switched to a Mac and had to give up Microsoft Publisher!  I find LucidPress more user-friendly (for me, a non-designer) over Pages or Photoshop.

All images came from openclipart

We had many sheets of extra blank Demco labels and ended up using two different types.  I originally designed the labels to fit the larger label type, which we had plenty of, but my assistants and I decided we did not like the look of the larger labels on the books.

So, I resized the labels to a smaller size (still Demco) and we used those until we ran out.  We then switched to the larger size labels and trimmed them for the last few hundred books.  Due to budget constraints, and the fact that I can only order once per year, we decided to use up what we already had.  I didn't want to put the project on hold until I could get more of the same labels!!!

Nonfiction Labels

(Demco Templates)

Choosing Nonfiction Sections

The next step in our nonfiction gentrification process was deciding on what sections we want for our books.

This was where I found it hard to find research applicable to a secondary library.  Two favorite resources I found were:

Hoover High School Blog- This  is where I found most of my ideas for our sections and sub-sections.

Mighty Little Librarian Blog- Tiffany Whitehead's series of blog posts on gentrification are where I found much of my information on organizing, shelving, and label-making.

Here is the list of sections and subsections we decided upon for our library:

Nonfiction Sections and Subsections

1. War and Conflict
1. General
2. American Revolution
3. WWI
4. WWII
5. Cold War
6. Modern Wars
2. History
1. General
2. Prehistoric Times
3. Ancient Civilizations
4. Ancient Egypt
5. Ancient Greece
6. Ancient Rome
7. Middle Ages
8. Renaissance
9. Industrial Revolution
10. Modern World
11. Governments
3. True Crime
1. Spies
2. Ninjas! (We had great discussions as to where to put the Ninja books...🤣)
4. Health
1. Diseases and Disorders
2. Addictions
3. Human Body Systems
5. Wellness- We initially had this with health, but the section started to get really large and since wellness is a whole-school initiative so we decided to give it its own section.
1. General Wellness (yoga, stress relief, exercise etc.)
2. Self Improvement/Self-Help
3. Inspirational (Chicken Soup like books)
4. Education
5. Philosophy
6. Religion
1. General
2. Islam
3. Christianity
4. Hinduism/Buddism
7. Global Issues
1. Conservation
2. Alternative Energy
3. Civil Rights
4. Poverty
5. Terrorism
6. Social/Cultural Issues
7. Genocide
8. Narrative (Nonfiction that reads like a story- all genres!)
9. Cooking and Food
10. Music
11. Art & Design
1. General
2. Drawing
3. Crafts
4. Fashion
5. Design (home design, flower arranging, etc.)
6. Photography
12. Sports
13. Fun and Games
1. Video Gaming
2. Coding
3. YouTubers
4. Magic Tricks
5. Math puzzle books (and other puzzle books)
6. Fun Facts (fact books and Quick “encyclopedia-like” reads)
7. Photography
8. Movies and Theatre
14. Supernatural
15. Modern Marvels
1. Internet and Computers
2. Technologies
3. Transportation
4. Inventions
5. Buildings and Structures
16. Business and Math
1. Finance and Economics
2. Corporations and Management
3. Math

17. Science
1. General Science
2. Biomes
3. Biology
4. Genetics
5. Chemistry
6. Earth Science
7. Space
8. Physics
9. Geology and Dinosaurs
10. Nature
11. Natural Disasters
12. Psychology (the study of Psychology, not self help)
18. Animals
1. Pets
2. General
3. Ocean Animals
4. Bugs
5. Amphibians/Reptiles
6. Mammals
7. Birds
8. Animal Fiction
19. Poetry
20. Literature
1. Writing (hints, tips, guides)
2. Drama/plays
3. Language Arts
21. Myths and Legends (move near Fantasy Fiction)
1. Myths
2. Legends
3. Fairytales
4. Folklore
22. Travel and Geography
1. Travel
2. Countries of the world
3. Atlases
23. Biography
24. Graphic Novels
25. College Collection
26. Bangladesh Collection