We genrefied our fiction and adapted Dewey in our non-fiction back in 2021 (another blog post about that process is forthcoming), and by and large we've been happy with the switch. But Historical Fiction, in spite of its bright yellow spine labels, seemed to be generally overlooked. So after kicking the idea around for a few months and seeing no major drawbacks, we decided to give HF a facelift and further subdivide by era!
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| before (well, actually, mid-process, hence the empty shelves and table piles) |
Step One: Analyze collection to determine optimal era breakdown
What this actually looked like: piling HF books on tables in a very rough timeline so I could see how narrow or broad my categories needed to be. I weeded about 20 books, switched the genres of a few, and ended up with roughly 600 books subdivided into 8 categories.
Step Two: Design era signs & determine how to indicate
The section I struggled with the most was 1600s - 1860s, which includes the Salem Witch Trials, American Revolution, the French Revolution, Regency novels, most of Dickens, the American West, and the American Civil War. In our collection, though, all of that only spans 6 shelves, and I didn't want to have a new era on every shelf, so... I reserve the right to recategorize at a later date if necessary.
A note to anyone who (like me) feels a little nauseous seeing the 2000s included in Historical Fiction: As of right now, most of the 2000s novels that we include here are based around a historically significant event like the September 11th attacks. Since 2001 was well before my high school students were born, it only makes sense that they would look for those books in the Historical Fiction section. We do still have some early 2000s novels in our Realistic & Relationships section as well, but only if they don't have time-specific references.
Era indicator signs were designed by me in Google Slides and are sized 5x5" to fit our acrylic magnetic picture frames. Those have been around longer than I have, so I have no product link.
To update the organization, we used these prelaminated 1/4" dots from Demco and matched the dots for each era to the font & frame color on the era signs. As of right now, we are not planning to further update Sublocation or Copy Category in Destiny-- these will remain Historical Fiction unless a need arises to get more specific.
Step Three: Reshelve, but make it dynamic
Since we were taking every book off the shelf anyway, we also figured: why not employ dynamic shelving when we put them back? Let's breathe ALL the new life into this section!
We've dabbled in dynamic shelving before, but this time it feels like we "got" it. We'll continue to adjust with book stands and book ends to keep things upright, but the difference in vibe is palpable.We ended up adding two more shelves at the very bottom to make room for everything because I couldn't bring myself to weed too much. I am in love with the way this looks!
One super important thing to keep in mind when switching to dynamic shelving (and displays, and posters, and collection development) is balanced representation. I weighed a few factors as I was choosing which books to face out in this initial process:
- Books with multiple copies: Often (but not always) my faceouts have multiple copies. This means that if one is checked out, there will be another behind it to maintain the structural integrity of the display.
- Books with interesting covers: The purpose of dynamic shelving is to draw the eye, so I tried to select faceouts whose designs would appeal to my students
- Books in a series: I like to stack books #2+ in the series horizontally and display #1 as a faceout in front of the series stack.
- How many faceouts I can fit on a shelf without it looking overwhelming: 2-3 seems to be a good balance on my shelves
- What messages the covers were sending: I tried to maintain a balance of gender, skin tone, and couple types across the whole section, and we'll keep that in mind as books circulate.
We have already had more students browsing the Historical Fiction section and it's only been finished for a day. I'm looking forward to seeing our end-of-year circ stats!
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| refreshed! |
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