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.

Norton had attended Western Reserve University to become a teacher. In 1932, she left the university due to the Great Depression and started working for the Cleveland Library System, where she would stay for 8 years. From 1940 – 1941, Norton worked as a special librarian in the cataloging department of the Library of Congress, and after a failed attempt at a bookstore in Maryland, returned to the Cleveland Public Library until 1950. The High Hallack Library, in which Norton was a major influence and organizer, was conceived as a research facility for genre writers and scholars of popular literature. Named after one of the continents in Norton’s Witch World series, it was once home to 10,000 texts, videos and other media. Opened in February 1999, the facility closed a short 4 years later in 2004 due to Norton’s declining health.

Some of Norton’s best known fantasy works are The Halfblood Chronicles with Mercedes Lackey.  This series consists of 3 published books, The Elvenbane, Elvenblood, and Elvenborn, with a fourth book that has yet to be published due to unknown reasons.  Another major Norton series is Witch World,  consisting of 25 books and several omnibus editions.  The Series is divided into 3 Cycles: the Estcarp Cycle; the High Hallack Cycle, and the Turning. The first book in the series, Witch World was first published in 1963.

Norton’s diverse career in science fiction, fantasy, and young adult literature ultimately led to the creation of the Andre Norton Award, which is given each year by the SFWA, for an outstanding work of fantasy or science fiction for the young adult literature market, beginning with publications from 2005. The Norton Award doesn’t count as an official Nebula Award, but it does share the Nebula ballot and is voted on by SFWA members. The Norton award is decided by a jury whose role is to expand the ballot beyond the six books with most nominations by members of the SFWA. This year’s winner of the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy was Fair Coin by E.C. Myers.

Norton wrote novels for 70 years, an amazing stretch of time for any writer. Her influence and touch on the genre has been felt by many readers and writers during that time, and has served as a starting point to four generations of science fiction and fantasy readers and writers.  No matter where the genre may go in the future, Andre Alice Norton’s influence will continue to be felt by new generations of readers, and serve as inspiration for new generations of writers for many years to come.  Andre Norton passed away in 2005 at the age of 93 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

The post Andre Norton: Librarian, Writer, and Fantasy Grande Dame first appeared on Public Libraries Online.