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IST 605: Genrefying School Libraries

To Dewey or not to Dewey, that is the question:Published research to assist school librarians with how to best organize their library collection.

Introduction

There are an abundance of journal and online articles, blogs, research papers, videos, and webpages dedicated to the genrefication of libraries. This boxes within this page contain hand-selected resources for you to reference when deciding if you should genrefy and how to go about doing it successfully should you decide to adopt this system of classification.

Information on the Dewey Decimal System is also included for you to reference if needed.

Search tips and techniques

Searching online for resources: utilizing a search engine such as Google is a quick and easy way to locate a plethora of relevant information related to genrefying a school library.

Here are some basic Google operators that will assist you in your search:

  • " "  : quotations search for results that mention an exact word or phrase (example: "genrefication school library"
  • OR :  searches results related to X or Y (example: genrefication or library)
  • AND : searches for results related to X and Y (example: genrefication and library)
  • - : the minus operator searches for words or phrases excluding a word or phrase (example: genreification -elementary)
  • ( ) : groups multiple words or phrases (example: (genreficaiton or organization) library

Keywords and phrases to use:

  • genrification vs Dewey Decimal System
  • genrification in elementary school libraries
  • why should I genrefy my school library
  • school libraries AND genrefication

Searching within your University's Library:

Utilizing your university's Discovery Platform is a quick and easy way to begin your search. This can, however, lead to overwhelming numbers of results, many of which may not be relevant to your information needs. Utilize the advanced search feature to assist in locating relevant sources of information.

For example, a search of "genrefying an elementary school library" (without quotations) in UAlbany's Discovery Platform yielded 16 results. That is not an overwhelming number of results, but you may find that some of the resources listed are not exactly what you are looking for. You can filter your searches to in the following ways to narrow your search even further (including but not limited to):

  • peer-reviewed only
  • available in full-text
  • focus within a specific date range 
  • online accessibility (these are some of the advanced search features and is definitely not all-inclusive)
  • language
  • material type
  • words/phrases that are included in somewhere in the text (author, title, abstract, etc)

If you know what database or scholarly journal you would like to utilize, then your university's database and journal finder tools would be most helpful.