Some Words Stay the Same
There are certain genres of books that cross multiple reading levels and ages. Action books are in picture books, tween, and teen books. Humorous books are in learn-to-read, first chapter, chapter, tween, teen, and adult. SciFi and Fantasy start in chapter books then continue through tween, teen, and adult. Even more important than the words being the same is that the notations on the books remains the same. We have certain colors and images that denote particular genres. A young girl reading a SciFi book will know that the image that denotes a tween SciFi book will also be used to denote an adult SciFi book. A young boy can read a humorous Elephant and Piggie book from learn-to-read and a Captain Underpants book from the chapter book section. Then in a few years, he can read a book by Christopher Moore in the adult humorous section.

Some Words Change with Age
For younger children, we use the term “chiller” for scary books, but in teen and adult we use the word “horror.” For young children, “Seen on TV” is the genre where all the books that match television shows and movies reside. For adult books, the genre is “Movies & TV.”

Genres are Different Sizes at Different Reading Levels
We have discovered that not all genres appear to have the same level of popularity across all age groups. In fact, we’re not sure any genre maintains the same level of popularity! Some of that discrepancy has to do with what is popular in the community. For example, the tween section has a very sizable fantasy genre. It takes up a much larger proportion of the overall collection than the adult fantasy genre does when compared to the entire adult collection. In the adult section, mysteries represent a huge portion of the overall collection but in teen materials, it is a much smaller percentage. It doesn’t mean that the same genres shouldn’t be there, but it does mean that we can’t assume that the popularity is the same across the board.

For us, the idea for maintaining as many similar genres as possible was to help patrons of all ages easily browse for books they wanted. It also meant that as their reading abilities improved they could know that the same types of books they had enjoyed would always be there. While it doesn’t work perfectly every time, we have been surprised at how many people, particularly children, have appreciated the thought and effort we put into this.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Putting Your ENTIRE Fiction Collection into Genres first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Do you have commonalities between large numbers of books in your collection? There are some major groupings libraries tend to use to divide books into genres. Common ones include mystery, science fiction, fantasy, westerns, inspiration, and romance. Do these groupings represent what you would consider a sizable portion of your collection?

Are there special niche books that are particularly important in your community that should be kept together? Some libraries like to keep local authors together on shelves. Other libraries choose potentially more narrow genres to group together like suspense, horror, historical fiction, or urban fiction. There can also be chick lit, humorous, book and TV, Amish, teen books for adults, sagas, supernatural, and war stories. Some libraries have a large collection of books that are recommended by the staff, and these books are all grouped together. What is really special in your library?

Do you have a defensible reason for changing either to separated genres OR putting together books that were separated before? Some communities, for whatever reason, tend to have more adults who read within a particular genre as opposed to reading a particular author. Would breaking the collection into smaller groupings, like genres, encourage more browsing or help patrons find what they are looking for more quickly? If you have books separated into genres, combining all fiction books together saves shelf space if you need more room. People are going to resist change whatever it is. When they want to talk about the change, you need to have answers for them.

How are you letting the staff and the public know changes are coming? Whether you have a newsletter, Facebook, newspaper articles, or some other way to tell the public, you’ll have to do it more than once. You may even want to get the staff and public’s opinions before you make a final decision about what to do with your fiction collection. Whatever decision you choose, make sure your staff is able to answer questions about why books were moved from “where they’d always been.” Preparing staff makes the change easier for both staff members and patrons.

Whatever you decide to do, someone isn’t going to like it. That’s just the way it goes. However, providing clear signage to help people find what they’re looking for will help quite a bit. However, making sure your decision is the right thing for your community is ultimately the most important thing.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Separate or Keep Together? first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Choosing your genres…This may seem obvious, but choose all your genres before you get started and stick with it until the end. Look at what books seem to circulate well. Look at review magazines or other publications to see how they group fiction materials. Take a survey of your patrons to get ideas. However, we also strongly suggest you pull some books from a section of your shelves. Look at what genres they represent. Does your collection gravitate towards a specific direction? However, keep in mind that if you choose to create niche genres, these will be more fluid. When the books go out of style, you may want to dissolve the genre and return the books to other areas. Or someday there may be a new niche where a large number of books are published, and you may want to keep all these books together. For example, with the craze for vampires and other supernatural entities, our library decided to create a supernatural genre to keep these books together. And, in the future when vikings or something else become extremely popular, we may need to create a new collection.

Where do you go to determine genres…Many book vendors have genres listed within their online catalogs.  OCLC’s WorldCat has genres specifically listed in their catalog entries as well. But keep in mind that both OCLC and also the commercial vendors are judging each book individually. Also, if you are part of a consortium, see where other libraries have placed books or series of books. This may give you ideas about what genres you would like to include in your library.

When to take a broader look at your collection…When you are putting books into different genres, you will find that some authors write in multiple genres. Some libraries classify strictly based on genres, while others try to keep author’s works together. This is particularly important if the library is in a community where reading an author’s entire body of work is important. However, our advice to you is do one author at a time, and pay attention to books in the authors’ series. You may find that throughout a series, each book has a different genre assigned to it. At the very least, you need to keep all the books in an author’s series together.

How are you keeping track of what you have done…Is there a master list somewhere that says this author goes in this genre, or this chunk of an author’s work goes here and this chunk goes there? It’s more than likely that you will have multiple people work on this project. How does everyone make sure they know what is going on and don’t either duplicate already completed work or do something that doesn’t match previous patterns?

When a patron disagrees with you…There will be patrons that don’t agree with what genre you have assigned to a book or a series of books. They may want to suggest additional or different genres to use. Not all their suggestions will be great, but listen to them because some will be very helpful. Take notes, and tell them you will consider what they say. It may not change what you ultimately do, but your patrons will feel they have been heard.

Good luck with your genre-fying project. It will be great.

Melanie A. Lyttle is the Head of Public Services Madison Public Library. You can watch her YouTube channel, Crabby Librarian, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rv5GLWsUow. Shawn D. Walsh is the Emerging Services and Technologies Librarian at Madison Public Library.

The post Genre-fying Your Library’s Fiction Collection first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

What is fan fiction? Originally a niche hobby shared through zines and in-person conventions, it is the act of creating a story based on already-established characters and worlds portrayed in literature and film. Some “fan fics” even focus on fictionalized narratives about real-life celebrities. Now, there are seemingly endless resources online where writers can share their work. These range from communities on more general blogging sites like LiveJournal and Tumblr to dedicated sites about specific fandoms such as Fiction Alley (Harry Potter). Some authors are even profiting off their work through Amazon’s new Kindle Worlds service, dedicated exclusively to the self-publishing of fan fiction.

According to a recent School Library Journal article, many teens use fan fiction as a creative outlet to improve their writing skills, make friends, and explore new emotions and experiences. One of the advantages to new sharing platforms such as Figment and Wattpad is that they integrate a social experience of providing feedback for others’ work, similar to traditional social networks like Facebook. Creating new stories about characters they already love can give teens an added incentive to keep writing and honing their crafts, in addition to providing what can sometimes be a much-needed escape from real life. Developing this skill and finding acceptance in the online world can boost a teen’s self-esteem as well. The hobby is not without controversy, though.

Some experts, including famous authors like George R.R. Martin, have voiced concerns that young writers should be using their creativity to concoct stories from scratch, as opposed to letting others create their worlds for them. There is also the issue of copyright and just how much of these already-published characters and plot lines can be manipulated under fair use. Finally, despite the fact that most fan fiction sites allow users as young as thirteen to post their work, not all fan fiction is appropriate for teens thanks to explicit sexual content, language, and even violence.

Many public librarians feel the pros of fan fiction outweigh the cons and have capitalized on this trend by creating fan fiction programs or clubs in their libraries. Still, others are wary. Should fan fiction be welcome in general writers’ groups? Should it be promoted through specific events that specially cater to that type of writing? The questions are endless.

Have you done anything to address this growing phenomenon in your library?

The post Fan Fiction: No Longer Underground first appeared on Public Libraries Online.