Wednesday, October 20, 2010

What about the Genres?

About five years ago, in response to some feedback from our customers, we divided the fiction collection at Ingleburn into Genres. The reasoning was that people usually like to read the same kinds of books, for example mysteries or romances. By grouping all the same kind of fiction together, we wanted to make it easier for our customers to find their favourite kind of books, and also to help them locate other authors who write in the same genre. At the same time, we kept a General Fiction section, for books that are hard to categorise, or which straddle two or more genres.

The change was one of the most popular things we ever did to the collection, based on the feedback we recieved. Of course, there are some customers who preferred the old arrangement. But frankly we were surprised by how much positive feedback we got! It was very satisfying - we like happy customers!

Over time we've made a few tweaks to the fiction genres. This year we've made a couple of major changes, adding the Classics and Chick Lit genres. We've wanted to add a Classics section for a long time, and a big donation of classics at the end of last year allowed us to form a basis for this collection. And the Chick Lit collection is a response to trends in popular fiction, and is proving to be one of our most popular genres.

Have you checked out the Readers Lounge  at the main Campbelltown Library website? There are some great links there for avid readers, where you can find information on new authors in your favourite genre, best seller lists, which books come in which order in series and the book version of your favourite film. It's worth checking out.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

How do the Zones work?

People have been asking about our non-fiction Zones. The idea behind the zones is to group recreational or popular non-fiction together in one area, rather than have it spread out in different areas of the library. For example, the Children and Parenting Zone has materials in it from the 150, 300 and 600 Dewey classifications. Traditionally, these items would have been spread out around the library building - the Zones are an attempt to bring them all together.

More academic, or "study" materials are still in their traditional Dewey number order, in the main non-fiction section of the library.

Many libraries are trying different ways of organising their collections these days, to try to meet the changing needs of our customers. The Dewey classification system can be confusing for many people, and while it works well for academic libraries it doesn't always work for a modern public library. Hopefully the Zones allow people to sit and browse through all the books and magazines in the area they are interested in. And they have a great view of the park!

At present our Zones are: Technology, which includes computers and machines of all kinds; Arts, Crafts and Hobbies, which is pretty much as it sounds; Body, Mind and Spirit, including self-help, exercise and matters spiritual; Children and Parenting; Travel, and lastly, Biographies.


What do you think of our Zones? Do you like them? Hate them? Didn't know they existed? Let us know in comments.