Saugus High School Librarian Kate Payne Librarian: Kate Payne
Saugus High School Library Website
The decision to genreify the fiction collection was a big one for me. I knew that the project would involve a significant change to the organization of the library. I am alone in the library and am the only librarian in my district, so I knew the project would be wholly up to me. After getting approval from my principal, I decided to do the project over the summer. I brainstormed with several English teachers was able to brainstorm with several teachers in the English department, who were excited about the project and happy to give their input. I also talked to some students, who thought the project was a good idea.
I started re-categorizing the fiction call numbers before the end of the year. This way I would have a starting point when I walked in over the summer. When I began the project in July, I used tables to organize the fiction books into genres. I used the list of fiction books that I had already generated to pull books from the shelves. These re-categorized books were the easy ones: books that I knew well and was able to put into genres without having to think too hard.
Books were sorted into piles by genre before the labeling process began.
Once I had these books in piles, I went back and sorted through the stragglers and weeded, which helped me remove a lot of old and outdated fiction. I used genre stickers rather than creating new call number labels for the books because I wanted students to be able to easily distinguish between the sections.
Dystopian books organized with their new spine labels to indicate genre.
Next, I had to move the reference section to where the fiction collection had been, and then move the biographies to the reference area. This was particularly challenging on a 90 degree day in July with no air conditioning, but it was worth it. The old fiction collection had been on short shelves that are crowded together and hard to see, so I wanted to move them to a more visible area. Once I was done moving books, I was able to measure the shelves and allocate space for the new fiction sections. All time considered, the project took three and a half weeks.
The end result - a more visible, well-marked, genrefyed fiction section.
The fiction genres I chose to use are: Realistic, Historical, LGBTQ, Sports, Romance, Dystopian, Fantasy, SciFi, Mystery/Thriller, Horror/Paranormal, and Classic. I recently added a Magical Realism section because I couldn't reconcile putting books like Bone Gap and Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies into either Realistic or Fantasy, and the English teachers and I are beginning to market Magical Realism to the students. I decided to use a separate LGBTQ sticker after talking to the gay-straight alliance students. I don't know that this would work at every school, but my students felt it would beneficial to have a separate LGBTQ fiction section, and it has worked well so far.
Even though we are only partway through the school year, I can confidently say that the project has been a success. Saugus does not give a lot of money to libraries or to schools, and there is not a huge reading culture here. It often feels like an uphill battle to be the first librarian that students have seen, but I have already had a huge increase in checkouts for fiction. Some of this is due to the help of my awesome English teacher colleagues (the senior English teachers in particular are focusing on free voluntary reading this year, and we have been working together to promote books and get students more interested in reading for fun), but I also have seen significantly more students coming into the library on their own to check out books for the first time. Advocating for libraries and reading can be challenging, time consuming, and fraught with emotional challenges, but taking on a project like this makes me feel good to be where I am. Even in a district with fewer resources and advocates, I can make a difference, even if it is a small one.
Even though we are only partway through the school year, I can confidently say that the project has been a success. Saugus does not give a lot of money to libraries or to schools, and there is not a huge reading culture here. It often feels like an uphill battle to be the first librarian that students have seen, but I have already had a huge increase in checkouts for fiction. Some of this is due to the help of my awesome English teacher colleagues (the senior English teachers in particular are focusing on free voluntary reading this year, and we have been working together to promote books and get students more interested in reading for fun), but I also have seen significantly more students coming into the library on their own to check out books for the first time. Advocating for libraries and reading can be challenging, time consuming, and fraught with emotional challenges, but taking on a project like this makes me feel good to be where I am. Even in a district with fewer resources and advocates, I can make a difference, even if it is a small one.
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