When I last posted about the genre project in the library, I was in the middle of generating reports, labeling books, and changing call numbers in our library program. I began with all the sports books, moved to mystery, horror and historical fiction. Pulling these books and moving them to a temporary location cleared out enough space on my shelves to start shifting books to make room for the new genre sections. I estimated the number of shelves each section would take and started the big shift. With each new genre I pulled, I shifted all remaining books to the ends of the fiction section of the library. I had students help with all of the shifting and a bonus cleaning opportunity appeared! (Strange, but true, observation: I would call teachers during their study hall period asking if they had any students who would like to assist in the library each time we had major labeling or shifting to do. 80% of the helpers were the male students. Not sure why this struck me as odd, but it did. Maybe they just liked the ability to move around - they always managed to turn it into a race!)
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| Library ninjas playing the dusting game |
When all reports had been run, books re-cataloged and "stickered", I ended up with about 200-300 books that were still on the shelves waiting to be designated a genre. This might have been my favorite part of the whole project. I called in one of my ELAR teachers and asked if her class would like to help in this final stage. I explained each of the genres and why a book would fit in one and not another. They had a great time deciding on the genres and I LOVED eavesdropping on this discussions. It was great to hear them discuss setting, character and plot. The best news? They tore through those final books in one 90 minute period!
This was definitely the messiest time of the entire process, but it lasted only 2 days. I had giant stacks of books on nine of the library tables. I'm not going to lie - it got a little ugly and there was LOTS of shifting this time around, but my amazing library volunteer and the library ninjas helped tremendously! Bonus was I did an obscene amount of squats that qualified for my exercise for the Summer. I will not feel bad about foregoing any Summer exercise thanks to this project!
So all that remains is labeling the books that are being returned and creating shelf signs to designate each genre. I can already tell this will help me with some of my purchasing decisions. I have a great visual indicating I need to purchase more books for my sports section as well as my adventure and humor sections. Stay tuned for circulation updates.
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| Neat and tidy, waiting for the new year! |
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