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Revamp the library: Genrefication

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Easy way to Revamp the School Library – Arranging the Library by Genre

A few years back, when I had heard about Generification, I was fascinated by the idea and wanted to try it out. I believe rearranging fiction books by genre can fortify the collection and spike up the circulation. Learners and teachers would quickly locate books of their interest. So, this year, with more hands to help, we plunged in.
Four years back, when I had set the library up, I had arranged it broadly by the Dewey Decimal System. My arrangement of fiction books was traditional, organized alphabetically by author’s surname.

I found, in these years, many sections of the library were rarely touched by our learners. During the library period, the younger ones always asked for help to select their favourite superhero or scary books. I hardly came across learners who would ask for books by a particular author. Rearranging the library was a big project to undertake and at the same time to switch over to another library software was quite a task. We wanted to start the project towards the end of the academic year as we aimed to do the stock inventory in the same process. We decided to generify our fiction collection and arrange the non-fiction by the Dewey Decimal System. As we listed down all genre labels we needed for each section, we found that the genres in the pre-primary section were more as compared to the primary section. We kept the learner’s interests, themes and topics of the curriculum in mind while deciding our genres.

We then put labels for the genres and started segregating the books. In the process, we found a vast collection of books in various series, and we decided to shelve them separately. We were quickly able to gauge the strength of our library collection and knew where to add more books. This arrangement would ease out the shelving process, and one would quickly identify wrong books in any section. We will take a few more weeks to complete the task physically and to document it.

We wish to present a newly refurbished library to our learners and teachers in the new academic year, which would help them make new connections with reading and library resources.

– Sanjukta Sikder


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4 Comments

  • Vinitha. M says:

    Yes, it’s very true that genrefication helps library and its circulation.even 3 years back, We were following the same author basis, but then changed. Recently, We changed the picture books as well, according to their themes. Now, our library has a diversity of series, authors, genres,themes, etc…

    • Anju Dutt says:

      Yes I also agree that genrefications makes a big difference in students reading . We started with two sections in our library – Graphic novels and Poetry and it was a big hit among students and children were excited to read and explore all the books.

  • Vinitha m says:

    Yes, it’s very true that genrefication helps library and its circulation.even 3 years back, We were following the same author basis, but then changed. Recently, We changed the picture books as well, according to their themes. Now, our library has a diversity of series, authors, genres,themes, etc…

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