Thoughts on
Un-Deweying a High School Fiction Collection
Lauren Magnuson,
Summer 2015
Overview: I had
been following the Un-Deweying movement for several years and did not think I
was a fan, but then I attended one
of the workshops by Kelly and Sandy and was convinced that this would be a good
move for Kenwood’s collection and would help my students. Having the benefit of their experience also reduced some of my
apprehension. I also collaborated with Melyssa Kenney and Angie Sofinowski
(details later in reflection).
Before the end of the school year, I met with my principal
to explain why I wanted to un-Dewey our fiction collection and asked if she
would be able to pay some of us to do it over the summer as it is a big
project. I only asked for one person to help me but after the first day, I went
back and asked if I could have others for the last day to help with the
labeling. She agreed to pay up to 3 more people. Unfortunately, I was only able
to find 2 part-time people. So she ended up paying 2 of us for 3 days and 2
others for 4 hours each. And, as you will read later, we didn’t finish the
whole processL.
Since I had to have someone within my school help me, I put
a lot of thought into who I wanted to help me do the project and chose one of
our Science teachers who is an avid reader of YA and adult fiction and who was
a member of our book club. I also knew that she was focused, thoughtful, and
would not be afraid to offer ideas as we went through the process. It turned
out to be a great partnership!
Time: It takes
way more time than one might think! Compared to many high schools, Kenwood has
a modest fiction collection, and it still took 2 of us over two 6.5 hour days
to divide the books into genres which we had pre-determined and had pre-printed
labels. On the 3rd day, we were able to have 2 more people join us
for 4 hours each to help with the labeling process which is also tedious and
time-consuming.
The scanning process is not too bad thanks to other
librarians figuring out how to do it in batches. Thanks for sharing!! (I used
the individual updating method.)
On the 3rd day, even with extra help, we were able
to get all of the genres labeled and scanned, except for Realistic books which is by far my largest genre! So the
Realistic books are shelved together but still need to be labeled and scanned
after the school year begins.
Genre-dividing:
Even though it took us so long, I think that I still wouldn’t want more than
2-3 people doing the dividing process because it would be too hard to remain
somewhat consistent.
For example, I thought I was going to have Horror and
Supernatural/Paranormal all be under Horror, but it became apparent as we
divided books that we needed to keep them separate. As we went through the
process, we had to continually make decisions such as deciding that vampires
and werewolves are supernatural but angels and demons (i.e. good vs. evil) are
fantasy. Sometimes LOC designations on the versa help; sometimes not. Sometimes
we disagreed with the LOC and put them in a different genre to remain
consistent with our guidelines or because we had read the book.
Many books are cross-overs between genres so, for example,
every once in a while we put a book that traditionally would go in Historical
Fiction into Mystery/Thriller hoping that a Mystery reader may be enticed to
read other Historical Fiction books. We were very selective and only put a
really good Historical Fiction book into another category as it will have a big
challenge representing the genreJ.
Realistic: Probably
close to a half of our books fell into this genre. We did do one sub-division
of Sports which will have the Realistic label and an additional label Sports
label. In the catalog it will be Realistic but they are shelved at the end of
the Realistic section. At some point I may go back and make a Realistic/Sports
sub-location so that when books are searched it is easier to know exactly where
they will be.
It becomes very
difficult to tease out subdivisions as many of the books deal with multiple
topics. We found this issue even with the Sports books. A book could be a
romantic, illness, sports, LGBTQ book. As I’ve been thinking about it, I may
get or make some labels or dots to put on books that would indicate topics that
may interest kids. For example, our Para-med students have to read a fiction
book dealing with a physical illness. I’d like an easy way for them to identify
these books when browsing. I will still keep the books in Dewy order within the
Realistic genre. If I do this, I may even integrate the sports books back in to
the Realistic section.
High School Labels:
Before the end of the school year, Melyssa Kenney (Parkville), Angie Sofinowski
(Dulaney), and I collaborated and discussed possible genres for our
collections. In general, we decided on the same, but we each have a little
variation to suit our collections and our readers. Angie decided to go with
pre-printed labels by Demco. Melyssa designed the genre labels to that look
more high school appropriate which she nicely shared with me. Thank you,
Melyssa!!
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