A House Divided? Two Views on Genre Separation

Conclusion

We should do everything we can to provide the entry points into the collection that patrons are looking for. Genre sections save time in browsing and allow our patrons to be independent if they choose to do so. While bookstores have different goals from libraries, we can borrow some of their techniques to more effectively arrange our collections for maximum use. However, some libraries lack space and staff enough to provide separate genre sections. To compensate, we should be all the more vigilant about using spine label genre stickers, offering paper and online reading lists, rotating genre book displays, using shelf-talker signs to direct patrons to similar authors, and promoting our RA services. And if the time comes that we have an opportunity to rethink interfiling, what is wrong with giving genre readers what they want? Sure, it means more work for the library and decisions to make that are not cut-and-dried. But isn’t it worth it to match more books with more readers?

Correspondence concerning this column should be addressed to Barry Trott, Adult Services Director, Williamsburg Regional Library, 7770 Croaker Rd., Williamsburg, VA 23188; e-mail: btrott@mail.wrl.org. Vicki Novak is Acting Branch Manager at the George L. Campbell Branch Library of the Maricopa County Library District in Phoenix, Arizona.

References and Notes

1. William Haefeli, New Yorker, Jul. 10, 2006, www.cartoonbank.com (accessed Aug. 13, 2006). Type “gay fiction” into the search box to locate this cartoon.
2. Sharon Baker, The Responsive Public Library: How to Develop and Market a Winning Collection (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2002).
3. Ursula K. Le Guin, “Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love” Public Libraries 44, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 2005): 21.
4. Reader reviews of The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, www.amazon.com (accessed Aug. 10, 2006).
5. Le Guin, “Genre,” 21.
6. Wendell Berry, Standing by Words (Washington, D.C.: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2005).
7. Baker, The Responsive Public Library.
8. “Dark passages,” Fiction_L Archives (accessed Aug. 10, 2006).
9. Baker, The Responsive Public Library, 282.
10. Catherine Sheldrick Ross, Lynne McKechnie, and Paulette Rothbauer, Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community (Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2006), 198-99.
11. Ibid., 10-16.
12. Helen Haines, “Technics or Humanization in Librarianship,” Library Journal 63 (Sept. 1, 1938): 619-24.
13. S. R. Ranganathan’s fourth law of library science from S. R. Ranganathan, The Five Laws of Library Science (Bombay: Asia Pub. House, 1963).
14. Michael Learmonth, “Can You Read Me Now?” Variety 397 (Feb. 7, 2005): 1, 94.

Pages: 1 2 3