Picture Book Shelving Arranged by Subject - Finishing the Job

The sorting process begins

Two years ago, we introduced a partial rearrangement of our picture book shelves.  This has been highly successful.  So successful that we felt it was time to fully commit so that our students can more easily find the books they want.  I blogged last week about how running a click and collect service last year reminded us that our students are looking for 'funny books' or 'princess books' and therefore arranging books by author surname is not very helpful for them.  When we first arranged books by subject, I only did it for some books and left the A-Z system in place for the rest because I was worried about "trying to get all the books to fit neatly into the subject areas when there is the potential for lots of overlaps".  But you know, if a book can be in multiple places you just pick the area you think it fits in best.  In fact, the biggest problem I had was with a couple of books that didn't quite fit properly in the categories we had.  Again though, the closest fit is the best choice and the world isn't going to end if it's not a perfect match.

We have a lot of building work going on at our school over the holidays, so for the first time since 2013, the library is not open over summer.  What perfect timing for a giant summer genre project!  Actually, because we like our projects BIG in our library, we have decided to 'genre-fy' the quick picks (early chapter books), readers, graphic novels and sophisticated picture books too.  That way all the fiction in the library is arranged by genre/subject.  This means that thousands of books will need to sorted, scanned into their new genres and stickered.  New stickers and shelf labels will need to be made.  Luckily, I have Esther, our Library and Resource Assistant, to help as otherwise I would get no holidays!

I did a bit of online research and also considered the genre categories we already have in our chapter book area (I can't believe it was 2014 when I 'genre-fied' this area).  I felt that keeping the same categories and stickers made sense in helping students find the same kinds of books they like as they get older.  We did simplify some of the genre names for the younger kids.  For example, our Horror genre has become 'Scary Stories'.  We've changed our Realistic Fiction genre to 'Friends and Family', not only because younger kids will understand this better, but also because of the large number of picture books that use anthropomorphic animals to tell friendship stories.  It did not feel right describing these as 'realistic' or as 'animals' (as the latter category is for "real" animals doing animal things).

Our Picture Book Categories

Firstly, we have the existing categories:

• Maths & Concepts

        Maths - includes counting, time, shapes
        Concepts - includes colours, patterns, opposites, size, perspectives

• English

        -  includes reading, writing, ABCs, creativity and using your imagination

• Historical (this used to be part of English but it had enough books to be on its own, it is also a fiction genre)

• Nature 

        - includes birds and the environment but no longer has animals

• Science & Technology 

        - includes inventing, internet safety, engineering

• Wordless Picture Books

• Maori Culture & Language 

        - includes bilingual

• Feelings & Life Issues 

        - includes mindfulness

• Fairy Tales & Fractured Fairy Tales

• Diverse Books 

        - includes different cultures, special needs, different types of families

Next, we have the categories based on our fiction genres:

• Mystery

• Adventure

• Friends & Family (similar to Realistic Fiction)

• Sports

• Scary Books (Horror)

• Fantasy

• Space & Robots (Science Fiction)

• Funny Books (Humour)

• Animals

• Classics

Finally, we have some new categories especially for our younger readers:

• Princesses

• Transport

• Famous Faces

        - includes TV & movie tie-ins, series books

• Superheroes

• Celebrations

So, there are 25 categories, which is quite a lot, but it's still one less than the letters in the alphabet!  I'm looking forward to finishing off this area and seeing how our students respond to it once school starts again in February.

Working out what goes where