Once when posting about genrefication I wondered where I’d be shelved given that an NYPL quiz about Dewey placed me in 636: Pets & farm animals. Kimberly Hirsh mentioned at the time that fiction tends to be genrefied more than nonfiction, so today I was super-curious about a post about genrefying nonfiction in some Wisconsin libraries. I was struck by this kicker.
The year I started in this position (2017-2018), there were 3,154 nonfiction books checked out between all five elementary schools. The following year, I started installing the bins. Our nonfiction checkouts rose to 9,031 – a 186 percent increase.
I get why some librarians would be resistant, and I can’t actually conceive of the hoops they’d have to jump through just to implement and get used to a different system themselves, but given the mission of libraries I’d think it’s tough to argue with results like that?