Sunday, December 12, 2010

A Grueling Day

The library system I work for recently decided to interfile all adult fiction. We currently have fiction separated by genre; science fiction, westerns, mystery and paperback romances are each shelved separately from "straight fiction". Today, four of the librarians (including me) began the process of combining all of the genres into alphabetical order by author's last name. We worked backward in the alphabet for four straight hours and only got to the P's! When we opened the library at 1 all of our tables were covered with books and the stacks were a confusing jumble. I am definitely going to need a long soak in a hot bath tonight to soothe my aching muscles!
My question to all of you regular library users out in the blogosphere is: do you prefer adult fiction to be separated by genre or do you like everything mixed together?

6 comments:

  1. I'm a bookseller, not so much a library user, and though I've made arguments for both sides, I think books sell better when the genres are separated. The counter-argument to that is that it makes certain genres "ghettoized." In my experience, people who read one particular genre prefer browsing more within that genre than in a large area of fiction "at large."

    What made your library system decide to incorporate all fiction together? What are your personal feelings about the decision?

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  2. My goodness, that must have been a huge job. I can see both sides of the argument, but I do prefer straight alphabetical filing. It's easier for busy people who have limited time to browse (I often have to dash through the library just before closing on my way home from work)and because I find that there are an awful lot of books that have a case for being on more than one shelf.

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  3. We finished today - it took 4 of us working all day, but we got it done. Part of the reason our library manager decided to interfile was for customer ease. You're right, Jane, many books and authors these days cross genre lines and it was becoming a hassle trying to decide where to put several series/authors. Another reason was for process efficiency. It is easier to catalog and shelve fiction when it is all together. Most of the comments I heard from customers today were positive, so I'm happy!

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  4. I'm for throwing all the fiction in together! That way, when I browse, I don't have decide ahead of time what mood I'm in for. Or if I'm looking for a book, I don't have to decide where the author might be categorised. ;) That said, I think the stickers on the spines are helpful too: that way readers only interested in certain genres would be able to pick those out from the general stacks. I'd LOVE a sticker for classics, to go along the sci-fi, western, and mystery ones.

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  5. Eva, I think most library patrons agree with you. We will be putting brightly colored tape on the spines of all the new mysteries, westerns, and sci-fi novels that come in. I wish we could do the same for classics!

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  6. This is a great question. I can see a couple advantages to lumping all fiction together. One is that some things are difficult to categorize. A historical mystery? A sci-fi romance? Where do they go? Another is that I would tend to head straight to the historical fiction section all the time and miss out on everything else. If it's lumped together, I'm more likely to pick up something out of my usual fare. Then again, it is less efficient if I'm in a hurry and can't remember the author's name.

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