Library Facelift

After reading an article in School Library Journal, "The End of Nonfiction" by Christopher Harris (March 2012), I decided to give our library a facelift. First of all I thought of the students who come to the library looking for nonfiction books. I point them to the "nonfiction" section with numbers on the spines. Often they would ask about a mythology book being nonfiction or an anthology of poetry or stories. I realized how confusing it was for them. They were looking for an informational text for a class assignment and to point them to "nonfiction" did not work for some. This was my primary motivation in giving the library a facelift. As I began to sort and rearrange, I found other areas that I could change. There were books in the sociology section about teens from other countries. When a student comes in to do a report on a country they will look in the geography section and stop there. It has been a bit challenging to find a place for all of the books and stay loyal to Dewey but I think I have a fairly good start. I made a Language Arts section which includes short story collections like Chicken Soup for the Soul, mythology, poetry, language and literature analysis. Students recognize the division as all the things they learn in Language Arts class. Next is Social Sciences--sociology, psychology, economics, crime, etc. Anything doing with our society lands here--the 300's of the Dewey Decimal system. Also here are inventions, and inventors (economics). Next comes Science--earth, space, biology which includes animals, disease and health. This leads to fitness, sports, games, hobbies, then art and because of shelf space the Guiness World Record books. Biographies were in their own section as was all of the religion books so not much changed there. I grouped all of the books about geography together by region staying fairly close to Dewey on these. Last is history--ancient to modern all grouped together. General timelines and sets of books are grouped separately. i had books from sets scattered all over and now they are together.
This is a modified Dewey, somewhat like a bookstore but mostly a way for our students to find what they need and perhaps find something else on the subject they are looking for. It has been a lot of work but the shelves look so nice. I am looking forward to sharing this facelift with our students!