I’ve been planning to genre shelve for a while now. Last year I started the project of color coding books by genre. Over the summer and since the beginning of the school year, I finished up with the color coding. I ended up going back and breaking Mystery/Adventure into their own separate categories, which was definitely a good call.

I have a volunteer grandmother who is GREAT! She’s a retired teacher and she’s willing to work on those monotonous tasks that I never seem to get around to doing. Last week she started going through and changing books in the catalog so we’ll actually be able to find and track books by genre. I’ve decided not to change the spine labels since they’re color coded and that makes for VERY easy shelving. I do want them changed in Destiny, though, so students will know which section to search. So instead of FIC COO for Caroline Cooney’s books, it will be F M COO to signify that it’s in the mystery section.

I was planning to wait on re-arranging until the move this summer. I was going to go through and box up by genre. It all made sense. Alas, patience is not my virtue. Not by a long shot. Seeing all of my genre stickers just DYING to get together with their brothers and sisters made me impatient. So at the end of last week, I decided I couldn’t wait anymore and I started moving things around…

 

Movin’, movin’, movin’….

 

So I just started moving things around, because I’m a spastic nut. I decided it was time and I WENT! My BFF and wonderful 6th grade ELA teacher got a little nervous when I told her I just started moving things. She’s a planner and list maker. I make her anxious sometimes! So at dinner we did a napkin diagram to make plan for the arrangement…

She moved her classes to the library the next day (which was last Friday) and helped me stay sane and get things in place. We ROCKED it and everything is now arranged by color! SCORE!

It was EXTREMELY dusty, so I used my handy pink and zebra print duster.

This experience was not without its moments of overwhelming stress. A teacher snapped this picture of me having a minor panic attack in the middle of my crazy move!

In the end, though, it all worked out beautifully. BEAUTIFULLY! I even created these snazzy genre signs, which was an idea stolen from my pal Tamara Cox, who used Wordfoto to design her shelf signs as well.

Check ’em out! I’ll be posting them on my Flickr account very soon so you can grab and use them if you’d like!

 

So far, the students are LOVING this new arrangement! I think that it’s really going to enhance their browsing experience. I think it’s also going to help me tremendously with collection development — I’m already noticing what areas need more attention.

Now, to decide if I’m going to rearrange the nonfiction section, too…