This year I took on the task of genrefying our fiction (chapter book) collection. The constant, "can you show me all the realistic fiction books?" questions mixed in with the, "I only read fantasy", statements meant that I was constantly scanning the shelves and pointing books out one-by-one. I know that a lot of libraries have recently switched over to the bookstore model (separate physical sections for each genre) but for our elementary school library I wanted the kids to still be able to locate books by author call numbers rather than genre. Especially for the younger students, who already find it complicated enough searching by author last name, I wanted to keep the books in the same order they were used to.*
So I began the tedious task of pulling each book off the shelf one at a time to look at the cover/read the blurb/the summary on the copyright page to determine the main genre before affixing a colored label atop the spine label to designate its genre. Going through this process took about a month but because I did it one by one and not by pulling all the books of a certain genre at one time, I was able to do it between classes and when I wasn't teaching. This allowed me the freedom to take my time and only work on it when I had a few extra minutes.
The colored labels were ordered from Demco and mostly match up to the color designations that the secondary school is using (in the hopes of consistency for our 5th graders that move on to the secondary library each year when they go to middle school).
I separated the books into nine different genres but this will depend on your collection. We chose fantasy/sci fi, realistic fiction, historical fiction, action/adventure, humor, mystery, animal fiction, sports fiction, and diaries. Many books can also cross between genres so we chose the one that we thought best fit the book. Sometimes this meant choosing fantasy over action/adventure, and other times this meant choosing diary over historical fiction.
One thing that we have not done yet is change the Follett Destiny records to reflect the new genre. I know that some librarians add in a sublocation designation for each book (which can be done with a batch update) and this is what we will hopefully tackle next year.
So far, students seem to be using the spine label colors to help them locate books (it helps that we have signs up showing the genre and the corresponding label color) and I am not getting nearly as many requests to show them "all the mystery books"!
*Our secondary school library switched to the bookstore model this year, with colored spine labels but also books organized by genre.