Yes! I did.  I only genre-fied fiction in my middle school library and I would never go back. My circulation  increased 175% and kids can still use the catalog. What has disappeared are my kiddos that wandered aimlessly and then just grabbed a book. I know that it is a great skill to be able to find a book on a library shelf, but I work at a public library and we have popular collections and staff who WANT to help you find a book. It starts a conversation and builds relationships. I can really say the same thing about having those great book conversations with students. I still teach the basics of library organization, but with increased curriculum demands I have eased up on it.

Here are the steps that I used to genre-fy the fiction collection:

1. WEED. Tidy Up those books and tell them ‘thank you!’ Less is more and less books will make this a lot simpler.
2. Decide what genres will best suit your library and buy stickers that represent each one.  This was a little tricky, but less is more. I was also intentional about how I named the genre sections. Our sections were: Realistic Fiction, Fantasy, Sci Fi, Mystery, Sports, Suspense (otherwise known as scary or horror), Romance, Historical Fiction and Graphic Novels (I prefer Comics, but that is another blog post).
3. Next, put an appropriate sticker on each book in your entire fiction collection.  I know this sounds overwhelming. It goes faster than you think. You will be able start judging books by their covers. . .literally. Now, you are probably thinking about what you would do with those genre defying books. . .give it your best go! If you have two copies put one copy in two different sections and see how they circulate. You can always change the book’s location. This is also a great opportunity to get some excellent historical fiction books in other more popular genres like Sports or Romance! Adventure and animal books are difficult to place. I didn’t want too many sections so I put them in Realistic Fiction.
4. Now you will need to move the books. Whaat? I know it is a daunting task. I was remodeling and packing so it was a bit easier. I used carts and pulled one section at a time. For example, I pulled Fantasy and put them on a few carts. We then wrapped the carts or boxed the books by section. It gets tricky if you are just moving around books. Spacing can be difficult to judge. If you have students help, make sure they are reliable and good listeners. The more you move the books will increase the chances that they will get out of order. Plan or map out your sections and shelving. I count shelves and try to make sections wrap around in a way that makes sense to kids. Just think about all those calories you will burn. Wear your Fitbit and be amazed.
5. Changing Call Numbers is next. In our Follett Destiny system we were able to scan barcodes and change call numbers through a global change. We did not physically change the spine labels. We mostly let the stickers do the talking in that respect.  All the books we added going forward had the updated genre call numbers. I chose 3 letters that made sense with the genre. SPO for Sports, HIS for historical, SCI for Sci-Fi etc. Realistic Fiction became RF because I didn’t know how else to shorten it, but in hindsight I probably could have kept that FIC.
6. Teach the students some really great genre lessons! When I got my books from book fair every year I would divide them up and let the kids decide where they would go. This was after we had already discussed genre elements. This was a great opportunity to have students use critical thinking skills and make some tough decisions. I had them share out and some titles would create a thoughtful debate.

I know that genre-fying is not for everyone. That is okay. I had a great time with it, and it gave me an opportunity to intimately know my collection. I have actually left the building where I genre-fied, but I am planning on doing this again. I heard that the next librarian UN-genre-fied  the collection. We all have different ways to be organized and make sense of our lives. There are always oops and redos, but I don’t sweat the small stuff as a teacher. And, if you can tell me where to put Steam Punk books. . .that’d be great!