 So, next up on Big Talk from Small Libraries 2024, we are going to learn about a genrefying your public library. This is something that a lot of libraries have been doing recently, and I think, I hope, successfully. And Alec is going to tell us about what they've been doing here at the Worcester County Library in Ocean City, Maryland, where your population serves a little more than some, 6,900. Is that still after it? It is, but I'll go into it a little bit, just being a tourist town. So we do have a little bit of a burst in the summer. Of course, special case. All right. So go ahead, Alec, and introduce yourself and tell us all about how you did this at your library. Yeah, thank you for having me. So I'm just going to talk about genrefying your public library today. This is something that I've just had a lot of time to do here because we do have a slower time and we have a busier time. But I'm just going to go right into it and give you tips, things that worked for us, things that didn't work for us here. So I am currently the branch manager of the Ocean City Branch of Worcester County Library in Maryland. So we are a county system. So there are five branches of us. I am surprisingly, you know, a tourist town, not the actually biggest one. We do have a larger branch population elsewhere. But I'm just going to talk a little bit about the library, just so you can get an idea of, like, what we are. So my year-round population is about 7,000. The summer population between June through August does swell to 300,000 plus. But we do not see all those people at the library. Most of them are at the beach. So I cannot say that we actually have over 300,000 people. But we do see a huge spike in seasonal usage. So I do about half of my circulation probably June through August, and then the rest of it throughout the rest of the year. So the nice thing about us, and I did put on here unfiltered feedback, is we are not most people's primary library, even of the year-round population. Some of them go elsewhere. So people like to give us their honest feedback of what we've done. They do not care if they don't like something, they come to the front desk and they tell us, wow, this sucks. Or the other way around, they tell us, wow, this is a nice library. So I think we have been able to receive honest feedback, more honest than sometimes I would like. But I think that in some ways helps to get an idea of what people really are thinking of what we're doing about this genrefication. So what is genrefication? So genrefication is the process of organizing, classifying, categorizing items into genres. This classification system can be easier for patrons that like to browse and many bookstores use for this reason. And this is directly from the North Dakota State Library. They have a topic about genrefying all of their libraries. And so usually when we talk about genrefication and you hear about it, it happens more in school libraries. So that's also why I wanted to talk about this, because we experienced a much more unique situation. We have a constantly circulating collection where school libraries have the summer off. So in doing this, I really was trying to find articles on how to easily genrefy your library and everything I was pulling up with about school libraries. So that's difficult when I have about 8,000 items constantly out throughout the library, not just an adult fiction or whatnot. And they come in, they go, people don't return them. I'm in Ocean City, so I do have people who keep books out for a whole year before returning them. So this poses extremely difficult challenges. And I think also something to consider, and I added this on here recently, but looking at the future, school libraries are genrefying their libraries. So students are engaging in that or understanding that they're using that as their primary libraries. So in some ways, we almost are the next step. And if we're not going to keep up with them, I mean, we're going to probably end up losing them or they're going to be frustrated when they come to us. So I think it's something that some areas might have to actually fully embrace when I have a fun meme. I'm not a regular library, I'm a cool library. And the reason why I include this, not just because I'm, you know, I think that we're so cool for genrefying. I did it because this is something that appeals to a younger audience. And I'm just going to be honest about it. The genrefication, most of our younger audience loves it. We see people who come to us from other towns nearby because they like how ours is set up better. They find it easier to browse, easier to just engage with the collection. So I put that on there just to show that really this is something that younger audiences are almost expecting of public libraries because they go to these bookstores, you know, in large cities. They're all genrefied for the most part. It's just kind of what they're seeing. So I think it's a good way to just kind of continue on to it. But now I'm going to talk about other reasons why it might be great to jonify your library. So layout and space. I am not, I do not have a great layout for my library. My library was fully created for aesthetic reasons. It's supposed to have a beachy look from the outside. The inside you're supposed to see like a ship aesthetic and all that, but it is an absolute nightmare. How they set up the bookshelves, how everything flows. Everything is broken up between random breaks, turn shifts, beams, all that great stuff. So it can kind of be used really as a tool to help with a difficult layout and space. Instead of people kind of struggling to figure out how to navigate a library by jonifying and working out collections in the smaller sections, it allows them to exist in these awkward areas as their own thing now. So instead of that little milk that's by the bathroom that is the random like P-A-T's or whatnot, you can now have westerns or something right there so that you're not trying to figure out how this can be incorporated. So what can you jonify really? So you can jonify anything. It's basically just organizing things in different sections, but I kind of broke it down into fiction and non-fiction. I think when people think about jonifying, you probably go to fiction first, and many libraries already do it. So they have mystery sections. Many of them have science fiction, fantasy sections, which is great. I kind of have gone a step further and have like a historical fiction section and all these other things just to see what people really like. And I think that's one of the great things about where we're located also is we were able to play around with these genres to see what people are actually engaging with, what has worked and has not. So usually fiction is where you're going to start first and I'll get into kind of how I did that and the cost of associative as well because I think that's very important, especially to smaller libraries. So there's also non-fiction. This one might be very controversial, but it is what it is. So organized based on subject and is less clearly established for the most part. So you can just do like science and nature or something. And already in Dewey, those are pretty closely linked, but the problem is is Dewey is just a bunch of letters. So unless you understand Dewey or feel confident with it, it's not really a great thing to work with. So I did break out some sections like science and nature for non-fiction, but we now have them all condensed and then within them we kind of have a little shelf talker about like this is where animals are and this is where like anatomy and stuff is. But for the most part we kept Dewey and that's just the realities of creating a whole new system is not really what I want to do right now. I'm also part of a system of five libraries and I'm the only one who has really done this. So I'm kind of just being a flagship to see what does and does not work. That was going to be a question that did pop up as of are all of your branches doing this, but you just answered that, yeah. No, yeah. And there are some branches that have more, I'll say established librarians, which nothing wrong with that, but who are more hesitant to change. And I think a nice cautiousness to this is always good to look at. You don't want to just run into things without any thought at all. I had thought about doing this for like two years and I just played around with it, tried to listen to patron feedback before doing this. So, but I decided to go for it, but anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll just talk quickly about some of the sections I made and I'm going to show some pictures of what they actually look like in my branch. So for fiction, I have about 10 genres I broke it out into adventure, general fiction, and this is always the question I get. They say, what if you don't know where to put things? I have a general fiction section still, so I put them in that for the most part. I think people don't think that there's going to be a general fiction section still, but there is historical fiction, horror, mystery, psychological suspense, romance, science fiction, and fantasy, thrillers, westerns, and you're going to get partakes on everything. I had a person who told me that he wished science fiction and fantasy was two different sections which was interesting because it's one of my smaller sections. And those differences you can play around like what's the difference between a mystery and a thriller. We could get into that, but I would prefer not to. A lot of that is going to be based on what you hear from your patrons. Patrons hear the word thrillers and they love it. And I'll kind of talk also about how I go by classifying these. I don't just look at a book and say, this is a thriller, I'm going to put it there. I actually have a system. So nonfiction, I did also do it here. So we have like an arts and entertainment, which I call kind of my miscellaneous category. Culture and identity, I tried to have an area for more of our diverse books, but not in a way that kind of just puts them in like a diversity box, but something that's more of a celebration. DIY health and wellness, people love health and wellness. And I have a difference between health and wellness and spirituality because I had a purchaser for a long time who was buying a lot of weird self-help books that were definitely more spiritual, but they're kind of all in the same call number. So I had, and some of the self-help books were by call leaders. So that was bizarre to me. And I didn't want to just take them out of the collection because we don't want to censor any of that. I want to wait for them to naturally not be sacked before moving them. History, everyone loves history. Obviously, 900s are already history, but I think having that section that's labeled and everything is great. And there's some weird books on world history that somehow don't make their way into the 900s. So it's a good way to still group them without those books getting lost. I have it in the news section. I think this is a great area for politics, really. So all the political books, literature and language and poetry and whatnot, professional development, really popular section was not really aware of that. So I've actually been buying more things. Another great thing about Drone and Find is you can actually see the sections that are moving faster and the ones that are moving less that you can purchase less for. Science, nature, spirituality, travel and true crime. Okay. And if you have any questions about anything, yeah, please feel free to ask. I'm more than happy to just talk about it. So this is a picture of our historical fiction sections. You can see that there's walls on both sides. And before this was a really weird connection. But now it's a great use for just this collection. And I was able to engage some staff as well. So I had a bunch of cream-colored walls. We just love unfortunately-colored walls all over the place that were completely empty except for weird fire alarms and exit signs. So what we did, I had a staff member who was really into a creative type. And so they cut out some vinyl stickers with crickets and kind of did some cool designs on it on the wall. Not permanent. I could just take those stickers off whenever we want to. But something that's kind of nice is it adds a little bit of life to the collection. It makes it happier. I'm not sure if you can also see, but on each shelf we have little stickers that say historical fiction and we kind of color-code them just to kind of make it more fun, really. Instead of just having everything just be grays and everything. And then here's more of my second floor. So you can see I have romance right here. And you have my general fiction section. Some people would prefer that the sections go in alphabetical order. I kind of had to just work with what my space had. If I went alphabetical, it just would be cornered into doing weird things with the layout again. And you also kind of want to promote certain collections. Romance is one that is really popular, but we noticed that if it's not right in front of you, it doesn't get checked out. So I'm going to put it right in front of you. Things like mystery we kind of put in the back because people love mysteries and they can go for them. So you really have a lot of options to really customize it and make it your own. You can see my thriller sticker on the side. I have weird in-cap labels that I'm working on replacing. So sorry for that. Don't judge my books. And then this is like our nonfiction section. I don't know who purchased these bookcases, but it's horribly small. As you can tell, I had to put things on top because I tried to remove things from the bottom just for people not to bend down as much. But we have history, DIY, all these great things that we've tried to put there and they're color coded, which I personally love. Anyone who is super organized will love the color code things. Someone does have a question about those bookcases. Yeah, they are small. That's interesting. At the bottom, I see you're using it as a display. And it looks like it's at an angle. Did you put something in there to make it be at an angle? Or how does that work? So what that is, I have the regular shelves that are above it. The pegs on it, if I raise the pegs in the back up and I turn the shelf around, the back of the shelf has a little lip on it that can act as a little holder. But really, I've just turned the shelf around and then raised it up a little bit. That is slick. I like it. Okay. So in case anyone has shelves like me, that could be a thing. And I've tried to use those displays more because I love them. I felt the bottom look too empty before. So that's why I added it like this. And I did do it in the fiction section also, but my pictures are a little bit old. Okay, so I feel like where people are actually wanting to know like how do you get started? What do you do? All these great things. So I think pick a section first. You know, adult fiction, adult nonfiction. You can do this in DVDs. You can even do children's fiction, wherever you want. But I would start thinking about what genres or sections you would like. And you can probably get an idea already of thinking about them where they would fit if you do have an awkward layout. And then after you pick genres, I think it's always great to figure out the rules you will use to guide you. So if you have a historical fiction, you have a mystery section. Will I go in historical mystery? What will you do with historical mysteries? Will I go in historical fiction or mystery? I just like to be consistent. So, you know, make your hierarchy. Do your patrons, are they probably going to like the historical mysteries in historical fiction or mystery? I have found that my historical mysteries tend to do better in historical fiction, whereas in mystery, they don't do as well. So I've been moving them over from our mystery section into historical fiction. And these are things also, I mean, I just mark them with stickers and shelf locations. So I just put a new sticker on them and move them into the new section, really. Another rule that you're going to do with authors, is you're going to keep them together, separate them. Some authors have a lot of, or they write predominantly one genre, and then they have like one random one. So one of the ones that come to my mind, is the Colleen Hoover. Everyone knows Colleen Hoover, there's such a face or a hype around her. Most of her stuff is very romance-y, but she does have that one verity book that is more psychological suspense. Do you put it in psychological suspense or do you just keep it with romance? I don't have a good answer to that. It's kind of what you think. I decided to just keep it with all the other Colleen Hoovers, and we just have a little shelf talk around it that says this book is technically not going to be a steamy romance, but whatever you would like to do, I would say go with your gut on that. And then so what sources will you use to determine where they go? We have access to Novelist, which is their EBSCO host. I'm not sure if you all do. And the state of Maryland does purchase that license for us. We have that here as well. Oh, good. I love that. Use Novelist. It's so great. You can look up every book, newest books and whatnot, and they give you genres. That's for the most part where I base my judgment on. I try not to make it about what I think a book is, but rather what it actually is. So that's where there's like thrillers and suspense for some books. You have to use your opinion on some. There will be books like JD Robb, which are more police procedurals. So are you going to put those in mysteries or thrillers if you split out those two sections? I put her stuff in mystery because we just felt like that's fit better. But these are things that you'll learn, but I would use Novelist. That's the best source for at least fiction. Nonfiction is a little bit more objective, honestly. And then figure out what your patrons liked also to guide you. So if you are noticing that they really love westerns, you know, definitely break out westerns into their own category. If they don't like, if you notice that they don't notice there's a distinction between thriller and mystery, you know, just keep them together. I probably would have kept them together in hindsight, only because it's kind of a nightmare to explain the difference between a thriller and mystery. But that's just how it is. And then there's also we have a psychological suspense section, which could probably go in thriller as well if you have those sections. But I also fully ran out of room for my thrillers. So that's why I had to break those out. So, and these are things that you can just keep doing as you guide your way through. But I would go through that first to just figure out how you're going to do it. And then on getting started, I think there are really three different options to go through with this. One are genre stickers, which is what I used in our adult fiction section. I bought these from Demco. They can be costly at start just to do them all, to do my entire fiction section. And this is to get the stickers. And then we also got clear label protectors. It was close to $500. So it is a little bit of a shock up front. But afterwards, I mean, you get a box of 500 labels and it lasts forever. So, and they're also easy to change. You know, it's just a sticker. You don't have to take the sticker off. You just put a new sticker over top of it if you want to change it. It provides color and a lot of context, which I like. So like the thriller stickers I had there, I then made my signs based on what that sticker looks like. But also Demco does have a limiting amount of stickers really. So even like the science fiction and fantasy, they didn't have one for science fiction and fantasy. They just had a weird sci-fi slash fantasy one. And it had a dragger on it. Not my favorite sticker, but it gets the job done. Whereas most of the stuff are just like science fiction stickers or fantasy stickers. Another option, which I used for my nonfiction section, was just color sticker or tape. Much cheaper at just colorful masking tape, you know, painter's tape, whatnot. I bought a roll of 12 different colors on Amazon for like $12. And it did our entire section. We then got more clear protectors to put on top of it so they don't fall off, but not nearly as expensive. So, and there's even more, you can even get like little circle dots, you know, things like that. Just to kind of give a signifier for staff or shelving to put them on the shelf. I think once they're on the shelf, there's enough context probably. You know, and they get easier to change, allows flexibility and provides color. I just love color. I think it makes it more fun. I think people enjoy it when it looks fresh and inviting in there. And then a more common one maybe, but it would be harder. And you might have to go through more bureaucracy if you have a larger system is actually changing the spine labels. You know, catalogers might have to be more involved in it. I don't know how everyone's system runs. I don't really deal too much with my spine labels. So, which is why I ended up not doing that for any of my collections. And I feel like most people probably feel similar, but I put here, these are biographies. So like B and then the biography name. So instead of maybe having like, I have a FGAR for thriller, it would maybe say something like thriller and then GAR. Less flexibility in that way, more permanence, much harder to do it. Also wouldn't add color, but it would give more of a seamless like view to it. So those are all the options really that I would say. And there's different price points for all of those. So I like to say that you should really keep all of your staff aware of what's going on. It'll probably be mostly like a higher level task that's going to be that's going to be worked on, but you want to make sure all the staff know because they're going to get questions all the time. So having them in the loop is definitely the most courteous thing to do. So for us, I have three managers here. And that's just because we have a lot of hours that we're open for. So we were the ones who were actually doing most of the work, but we were keeping them update on the progress. They're also going to be the ones when people return books to try to give them to us to make sure that we actually can sticker them or put them where they need to go. Because it's very easy to lose track of these books. It is very time consuming though, if you're going to do this. So you can maybe do it in like one genre at a time instead of us who did our whole section. But I have a lot more free time during the off season. You know, I did allow the staff also to question certain genre decisions. So we have like the Nora Roberts books. She has her inheritance series, you know, very much fantasy stuff, but I just kept them together and general fiction with all of our other stuff. Because I feel like honestly, her audience is probably going to look for her there, rather than in the science fiction fantasy area. And I had staff who maybe weren't as thrilled with that decision. So, you know, I definitely wanted to hear from them if they could convince me otherwise, then I would move it, but they didn't convince me on that book for other books they have convinced me on. And I think that's just good to make them feel included in the process also, rather than them just saying they're not knowing what's happening. And there's just far too many books. I mean, I went through about, I think I have 9000 books in my adult fiction section. I was bound to miss mark one of them. Okay, so labeling and doing all of this good stuff so very time consuming. So we had the ILS we use is called Polaris, if anyone uses that them all be able to compare but if not is fine. Most of them are very similar anyway. So we have a record sets that we could use. And we would have a record set for each genre. So as we were pulling books from our adult fiction section, and we just went from a through Z. So we just pulled the first couple shelves. And here's like an example of a bunch of books before. This is after we stick with them though. But we would go through every single book. And I would, we would figure out where they would go sticker them, you know, look them up a novelist do all those great things using the rules we've already established. And then after we sticker them, we would scan them all into their respective record set list. So all of the ones we stickered as science fiction fantasy, put them in that record set. Put them in that record set. And that was so we could change the shelf locations at the end. And that's how we distinguish them in the actual pack and the public access system, and in our own catalog system. Because that's also what people wonder, how are you going to know where these books are when you look them up? We use shelf locations. So you can use shelf locations, you can change the collections. It just depends on your system and the flexibility you want. And the stats you want to collect and how easy it is for all that. So there's options to all of that good stuff. So, yeah, so we would scan them into the record set and then we would put them back on the shelf. So I didn't change the shelf location at first, but we had them already, all the stickers that were on there. And that way, if they were still checked out, I could still change the shelf location if they were checked out all that good stuff. So we were hoping that patrons would maybe start to see the stickers and see where their authors would maybe be moved to. I don't think patrons looked at it that much. So that was probably maybe too hopeful, just based on the questions I got after we moved all of our books. But that was kind of the whole situation. So we just did that through the whole area and doing that process was time consuming, but less. You know, there's a lot of immediacy to it. If you just, you could take a year to do this section if you wanted to. And then before we shifted, that's when we would change the shelf location so that they would know where to go. And so like this is how it looks on the shelf, you know, science fiction fantasy and then online. This is what the shelf location looks like so that you can see where these books are science fiction fantasy. So shifting, shifting was an interesting experience. I was trying to be. I think a little bit too, I tried to think about too much so I wanted to do a thing where we tried to shift slowly, you know, maybe shift one collection at first, and then let it sit for a month and then shift another collection. And then we didn't want to disturb our patrons too much. But our patrons don't kind of, they're not in there every single day like that. They're the ones who come in every two weeks or every three weeks. And it was getting to the point where my shifting was corresponding with their gradual visits. So they felt like every time they came in, it was just being changed. So they were, some of the patrons were getting frustrated with the slow changes I was doing. So this is something to also be aware of that if you do too many small changes, it might make people even more annoyed than if you didn't. So after that, I got a few complaints. We just decided to just wrap it up and do a quick old shift, which it did take a week. So it wasn't that quick, but it's hard to make everyone happy. Exactly, exactly. And you know, I like to think it's a thought that counts, but we were able to shift faster. I just thought that in one way it wouldn't work as well. But so these are just kind of like tips also for anyone else who wants to do it. Things that didn't work well for us. So a good thing with all of this now is we just have to maintain it. So after you genre, that's the hard part. Maintain it is not. So when the new books come in, we sticker them and like put them on our new shelf. And then we do all the stuff that needs to be changed. We try to keep all those together, but we allow for modifications. I think it's perfectly fine, even if things change later on. And also reading has become easier. So the sections that we are trying to allow to grow a little bit more like romance and stuff I can read less, whereas sections who need to probably be trimmed down like my mystery section here. Honestly, I have a lot of mysteries that people do not read as much. And now that we have a thriller section, people are gravitating more towards the thrillers, which is just things that you're going to find when you do these things. So we weave mystery more now. Other areas like historical fiction, you know, I was surprised that that one did so well. That was one that I was hesitant to actually break out from general fiction. And our older patrons, especially love it. I had to sit a chair next to that section for our older patrons who like to just sit there and look at all of the books. And they're trying to make their way through the whole section now. So that's always exciting to see. And then just some patron feedback that I'm sure you all are curious of. So our long term patrons, and I say long term in the sense that they've been coming here for decades. They struggled at first, definitely. These are the patrons who come in with a list of authors you know that I'm sure you've seen. And they want to get, you know, this book by nor Roberts this book by CJ box, you know, all of that good stuff. So it took them a second to understand that the books weren't all just going to be in alphabetical order they're going to be broken up now by genres, which most of them do would be in the same genre anyway, when they have those lists. But they quickly turn around honestly, once they figured it out. I think I haven't seen a single complaint and probably like, I don't know, eight months now so that's great. And since all the staff were included and understood what was happening they were phenomenal and explain the new system patrons, trying to keep them updated on the authors where they were at. It was hard at first, but they did a great job. They were, since they understood what we were doing why we were doing it, where things were going. They were great at directing people. So, it's, I said almost a year has passed I haven't updated this it's been much longer now. So we have consistently seen increase in circulation for every collection now we have genre five. I mean, obviously, there are still increases happening from during 2020. But I think what we're seeing, and the ones I have put a lot of effort into, I think we can correlate a little bit. And it's been in place the more positive remarks we receive honestly. I think I see more librarians coming to visit us now, who are just wanting to look at the space because they want to do it themselves, which is great I love to just talk about what we're doing. And just show, and to have people be able to see what a public library looks like when you do this because it's hard to really imagine it for the most part. Like small little bookstores do it, but you don't see public libraries that are doing it so I'd like to show people that it can be done definitely. And we definitely are seeing patients staying a lot longer and browsing more. And it's not like a frustrated browsing. It's like, they're picking a section and they're actually engaging with it in a way I have not seen before. So I'm very excited for that. And again, I feel like we have very honest patrons here. And we overhear a lot of conversations and people are very opinionated so we do not get very many negative comments about this. And like I said, and we get negative comments about a lot of things but not this. Yeah, which is that's a library for you. Yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But yeah. And that's kind of all I really have. I went through it pretty quickly I tried to chop it down a little bit, because I wanted to give time for questions or any other thing. I'm more than happy to keep talking if anyone would like me to. Yes, of course. We have quite a few questions and comments that came in definitely. So, let me just get through. So yes, I think I'll thank you so much for this. It is something I mean, you said you still have a lot of libraries coming into visit and seeing you doing it. And it seems to be it's something that I've heard about for a long time of libraries doing it. But I don't maybe I do I hear about it because I go to conferences and I see the presentations, but that's not all the libraries out there there are still so many that are thinking about it and anything about doing it. And we've had presentations either on here on our weekly show like ditching Dewey and things like that. So it has been happening, but there's obviously a lot of people who are still on the fence about it not sure should I shouldn't I what if it is an absolute failure I don't know. I think I'm sure in some places it hasn't worked or only where some part of the library will we'll see. But so we do have quite a few questions and I think many of these you answered as you were going, you know, they've pre predicted what you might talk about but I'll just go through them quickly to make sure we did get everybody's issues addressed. So someone says you talked about the beginning about the cost of doing it that it's someone did just comment saying yes it is a bit expensive when you don't have the room to be so specific with the genres. Just like, you know, small library, small space like what you have there. So managing books that fall into multiple genres, deciding where to put them you talked about that I believe. Yeah, I can talk. I can talk a little bit more about that because it's definitely a very difficult thing to do. There are, you know, your authors that kind of do half thriller half mystery. I tend to go by what people are doing more of recently for that type of stuff, but the ones where they fall into different genres. I should have spoke more about that. I like to keep like a hierarchy and I write it down but you know you can also keep it in your head. You know, I like to think that science fiction and fantasy is a very specific genre. So if it's a science fiction fantasy mystery, it should probably just go science fiction fantasy mystery people for the most part are probably going to read it. You mentioned that that kind of caught my attention you said someone said that science fiction and fantasy should be separate and he said you have a small area that's that though really it's not as many people interested in that because for me I am I am a sci-fi and fantasy reader myself that's my favorite, my favorite genres and in my head they are two very different things. I don't I mean I read both of them, but there are some people that are just fantasy and they don't and science fiction being more science hard, you know, science fantasy being more fantastical magical that I see them as two different things and that it could confuse some people that they're together, but they're all you know so my place to get sci-fi fantasy. Yep. Yeah, yeah, it's hard because then you have one with kind of wizards and stuff and we're next to a book on a space opera, you know, going through the plants and whatnot so I think that's what the book covers and the little and then Lerbs are all about that you'll figure out which one is yours. Exactly, exactly. But yeah so I just try to have a hierarchy, you know, and I think just trying to follow that for the most part in trying to figure out your patrons with one. There's going to be harder ones. I had this genre that has kind of plagued me for a very long time now it's romantic suspense. And I think romantic suspense is hard because so these are like Heather Graham, Sandra Brown, the newer stuff. So historically they were much more romance authors like steamy romance even. And these books are, you know, they have romance but these romantic suspense books are like my brother was just murdered and I'm going to fall in love with the guy who's trying to protect me from more murderers. And it's romantic but it's very gruesome I mean these pages are just like, like a forensic, you know, type thing where they're just talking about like body parts and stuff so it's hard. I don't want to put that in a romance because I just feel like that's not appropriate for kind of what that collection I'm trying to build it has. Yeah. So Dimco does have a romantic suspense sticker though so there is the possibility to make that own section. Exactly. And then I was keeping them in my general fiction for a while, as I do with kind of the things I don't know what to do with they just put them in general fiction. But you know, I've been looking at them and I'm thinking about putting them in more of the psychological suspense area because they do have a lot of work that suspense. So I just kind of put this little shelf talkers that say this is more romantic suspense rather than like psychological on there. So that is an option. I know there's people like Jeffrey Archer who does a lot more thrillers now but he has a lot of historical fiction stuff as well. And I've made the mistake of not just putting them with thriller and now my thriller section is far too filled. He kind of lives in general fiction for an indefinite amount of time now. This kind of thing you can chain move it around as you realize you know what this one really belongs somewhere else. People aren't finding it here or at least this section is getting so big that it's become too general a thriller section I need to separate out some of these particular types of thrillers. Yeah. This isn't a thing in stone just like anything in the library. It can always be tweaked. Exactly. And so I did at one point I had my horror and suspense. I combined of psychological suspense and I did it because there's some similarities behind them. A lot of the horror books are very suspenseful and whatnot. But I have found doing that that you know when you take it outside of the librarian view of kind of like what these genres are actually at their core. You have to deal with the fact that people of you look at the word horror and they think it's a horror movie you know like Friday the 13th or something. So people are feeling very hesitant to even browse that so I did end up changing those two into their own different sections and the psychological suspense is now one of my most popular sections honestly. It's kind of my go to display now for like this time of the year when we are super slow. Yeah, because it's not tourist season. Yeah. All right, so let's up here we have I wanted to mention this do you. So within your within the genre areas do you alphabetize them then by author name or title how are they arranged within each genre. Yep yep so finish genre and adult fiction they're then done by author last name so as it would be like just normally like Patterson comes up for Grisham. That same thing we just have them in the different in the order nonfiction is a little bit hard so I, you know, I'm all for ditching do we but again I'm in a five branch system and this hesitant so I can't really just ditch it and do my own system for just me. So within my sections of nonfiction it is by do we still which possesses its own issues. Obviously, but I think it's a little bit more easy to figure out do we when it is only on about five shelves versus when it's on my entire nonfiction section, and I still a lot of shelf talk is on. So your nonfiction is genre fried and then do we within each genre. Yep. Yep. And so you've done this for the entire library correct. I think everything except for my large friendship. And that's because there's already a large print sticker on it and the books are. There's not too many genres really. I guess I could probably do a lot of just like thrillers and mystery but I don't really have a ton there and I thought it might end up looking too weird and I'm already really tight on space. Yeah, and there is a question that you mentioned large print because someone did ask a couple questions about did you incorporate different formats in the genres like large print audio. Have you done anything with those, but you just so yeah and there is that kind of the thought of including things together so like history you know putting historical fiction, history nonfiction like history audio books all together so you can just have one area to find everything. I think that's actually a really cool idea. I don't think my director would allow me to do that so I have to work within the system but I think if you have the desire, I think putting them together would be a great idea so you can direct people to certain areas. I'm also any. Having an additional sticker so you'd have the this is this genre and then it's also large print and here's the large print sticker. Yeah. And I have the issue where we are in a two floor building so I try to keep my large print on the first floor, just so people don't have to navigate too much around. So that would also pose issues if you are in a multi floor building. Sure, sure. So people asking a lot about the card the catalog doing those shelf locations your catalog you talked about that about how it was handled in there. I use shelf locations you can use collections. It's going to be, I will say finding stats using shelf locations for my system is a little bit more difficult. There are statistical codes that you can also connect to it. If you don't just want to, you know, eyeball it and see what's going on with not going if you want to actually look into it. I like the idea of collections, changing them so adult thriller whatnot. But these are things that you can just play around with and look to see what works best for you. Like I said, I just work with a system so I kind of have to work with in that area already so that's why I kind of did it this way it was the easiest way for me to get through it. And then someone asked about how you did this and I think you did mention that they wanted to close the library to do it. Or a period of days or did you try to finish the task during regular hours and I guess the answer to that is yes, yes. I did not close the library. I did it during it so I have. I was very involved with it, you know, I was moving books like crazy. We were trying to make it as the least intrusive as possible. I think if you did close it would be perfectly fine, especially if you did what I do it did where you stickered everything on the shelf. If you're part of a government or anything and you have a maintenance department. I'm sure you could probably get them easily to come in and actually move around the shelves for you because not everyone has the same manpower to do it. I had the option to do it that way, but I just am a little bit hot headed and stubborn so I wanted to I wanted to do it myself and make sure it looks good. You know, I had a lot of cards so I was able to do it. Not everyone has as many cards so this is also something to consider you know, are you able to do it kind of. Yeah, I did a shifting project in a previous library it is a huge. It's a thing. It's a big it is. Yeah, it's a lot. So here's what I don't think you mentioned this. What about your new books? Do you have a new books? Do you do do you do this to new books or is that its own section? How does how do you do it when you have the new ones coming in? Yeah, I should take a picture of my new book display if I do this again. But yeah, so I put I do have a new sticker that I put on them also. When they come in, I, you know, I first look up author to figure out where I want to put them. And then if there's no author then we'll go through novelist or if they're not looking. If the author says thriller but this is looking like a weird book maybe I'll look into it more. And I put that sticker on. And then I put the shelf location as new. And then we put it on a shelf, but on my new shelf it is broken down my genre. So it says we're deciding if we want to do this with some collections might start with juvenile nonfiction as it's the least used we want to increase circulation but unsure if it's worth the time. How long do you think it took to see an increase in circulation you said it's been a couple of years now so. Yeah, you know I actually it's so funny you say that because juvenile nonfiction was probably the last section I genre five. And it's mainly because I just, I felt like it was going to be a lot of work and I was getting burnt out by that point. But we recently did also because that was the only section that we also could not see any noticeable increase in. And so we actually genre five our section, I would say, two months ago. So it's very recently. And in that time, I have a huge spreadsheet, you know, of all my stats compared to previous years. So, you know, I don't like to compare like February to January because of different months. So if I like to compare January to January, January 24 January 23. And so if you look at it, we have seen a noticeable increase in circulation in this collection. I think you can see them almost instantly within a month. But like I said, you have to kind of look back to the previous year to have those search stats. What's happening at the same time of year. Yeah. Yeah, but I would say to really get the idea of if it's been successful and you probably have to have two years of actual stats behind it to see if it's a continual increase and not just maybe a small little blip that's happened right of people just wondering what's this all about. Yeah. Exactly. And we've noticed ours has continued to go up so and there's been months where it has significantly increased and there's other months where it's pretty plateaued, but it's never been under so. Yeah. So, okay, so you mentioned novelist which you said, you know, your state offers and we do here in Nebraska offer it for all libraries for free to have access to. But if you don't have access to novelist, do you have any suggestions of where they could go to find the genre designations to access. So that gets hard. If you're purchasing through like Baker and Taylor Ingram any of those type of publishers, sometimes they have genres through there. I tried to go less through a public source thing so like Goodreads is hard, because a book is going to have about every genre attached to it. Yeah, if you if you want to go that way you can. I would just be a little bit more cautious with it. There are other book sources also that you can look at. You can even look at other bookstores sometimes to see where they're putting things or compare to other library systems. I think that's perfectly fine. I don't have a great alternative. I would say at least like we purchase all for materials mostly through Baker and Taylor. I would use those next. I'm working with to purchase from possibly yeah. Yeah, yeah, because they have good at least. There are sometimes more minimal, but they do have subject terms put on them based on the publisher really so that would be my next best solution for you. Okay, great. Thank you. They say, we have a couple of questions about the same exact thing. What is Christian fiction? Other libraries have said that Christian fictions sections work well for us. I know I have some patrons who mainly want to read Christian fiction from what I can tell is by specific publishers. Do you have that section. Is that something that's something you did in your library. I do not have a Christian fiction section of my library. I do not have, honestly, a lot of my population in Ocean City are retirees from Baltimore County and Rundle County around like the Baltimore DC metro area. So they just naturally don't want them in the same level. I do have other town libraries in my county that do have a more significant interest in Christian literature, Christian fiction. And they use the stickers there, but they just haven't spread throughout for the most part. So it is very popular for the franchises as popular and I would recommend yes, splitting those out their own area, because I'm sure you will see them go like crazy if you do that. And this is just this is something that is to be aware of every library is going to have different demand, possibly. And what you may have a lot of demand in your library is not what another one. Yes. Christian fiction was demanded by our patrons in the past and it's the only section currently pulled out and genrefied and given how much they appreciate having that pulled out I think they would love genrefying more yeah yeah if that's something that you have a huge support for. And that's something to some people interesting that different people who have comments from other people doing it from two different points to different opposite extremes something. Let's do the most popular section, because that's only it's used the most and needs the most help with making things easier, and then other people go the exact opposite saying I'm going to go the least use section so it's not so such of a trauma to the people, and I think that goes with the last used one. So it's very interesting that people come to it from totally different. Exactly opposite. And one of the things that I did also so I had originally broken out our romance books at one time. And like I said, Ocean City, you know, people love their contemporary romances when they're at the beach during the summer so Yeah, yeah, so I had a section and nothing else. Everything else was just fiction, but we started getting to the point where people are coming in and saying, Okay, I see your romance section, where's your mystery section, and doing all these other things so we've, this is kind of what started my brain process into kind of doing this for everyone is that obviously there's people who want to just morale the certain topic. That's what some of the others mentioning you know, I think your way of organization is much more user friendly it's like going to a bookstore and people love going to bookstores. Yeah. Yeah. And I know that there are some critiques and I did have an assistant manager who was actually kind of opposed to this, because they said that if people just go to their own genre, then they don't get to experience all the other genres. And I did not like that rationale because I think when you were using Dewey, they're going to what they like. Exactly. They're just glossing over everything else and just finding what they want anyway. It's just harder for them to find what they want. So I don't know where this person from they put accelerated reader stickers on their junior fiction books to help with that area so another additional sticker that you could put on. So that's all most of the questions that we had, which is good to get into the top the hour again, just a few comments here. Someone said we did this our children's level reader section it was hard to fit the books in the categories. And just in their children section they had 13 that they tried to do so it can be a struggle. And since I love to see someone who thinks outside the box and does random things like flip a shelf to make what you have work interesting ways. People think I'm crazy never visualize what I'm thinking but thankfully so far they like the results. Yeah, just do it and you never know what kind of response you'll get. I'll take a compliment I'm a person who has you know a bunch of cat playing instrument pictures behind me up here so. They expect it from you then. They're going to do this kind of thing yeah. And then I think this is more rhetorical question she didn't talk about it. What is the difference between a thriller and a mystery. And if you want, I can get a quick rundown on it. A thriller is the main character is kind of like, you know, their life is at risk in some way or another, whereas the mystery is more just like a who done a type thing there's less risk involved. And it could be a little of both but yeah there's you get a thing that's what you're talking about how you try to decide to give up the primary. Idea of the book. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. So thank you so much. This is great. I think obviously with so many questions and comments of very, very useful and needed topic to talk about and like I said, even though I've been doing it. With everything we talk about on here. There's always new libraries are going to be trying something out and it's great to hear someone else's experiences with it. So this was great. Thank you so much. And if you want to have questions, please reach out to me in my emails on the screen. So yeah, you're more than welcome to I'll try to get to you. Yep, yep. And his slides will be available with his recording just like all the other ones in a couple weeks. All right, so thank you so much.