Genrefication - why?

I have decided to "genrefy" my library.  And, I hate that spell check does not recognize that word!

First, what does it mean to genrefy? What is genrefication?  Basically, it just means to organize your library by genre.  Some people do this just to their fiction sections.  Some to their whole library.
Some of you might ask, "But isn't that what the Dewey Decimal system does?"  Well, yes it does.  Sort of.  Which leads us to the "why?" of genrefication.

The Dewey Decimal system is a fabulous way of organizing books and it has proven effective for many, many years.  But there are some flaws in the system.  For example, some of the books about the Titanic are found in the 300's, others are in the 900's.  Books about the branches of the military are in the 358's but books about military vehicles are in the 627's and books about wars are in the 900's.   Mammals are in the 599's, unless they are domesticated animals and then they are in the "science and technology" section in the 636's. And in the fiction section, all books are shelved alphabetically by the first three letters of the author's last name regardless of what the book is about.  All of this makes it confusing for kids and not very intuitive for adults.  When you go into a book store,  you look in the section that has the books you like.  A mystery fan? You go look in the mystery section.  A romance lover? You go to the romance section.  Why doesn't it work that way in libraries?

So, some libraries are making the change to genrefication.  It is much more straight forward for kids.  They can find the kind of books that they like.  Most librarians find that their circulation numbers go up after they genrefy because kids can browse in the section of books that they are most likely to read.

There are concerns, of course.  Shouldn't we be teaching the kids Dewey so that they will be able to find their way around other libraries?  Yes, we probably should, which is why I am not going to do my non-fiction section.  Yet.  What about authors that write in many genres, how will kids find their books?  If a student is interested in reading a particular authors work, they can still look them up in the on-line catalog and find what genre sections those books are in.  It may be a little more difficult than before but still doable.  However, finding all the mystery books, regardless of author, will be much easier.  Most of the time my students want a particular kind of book, not a particular author. My fellow library ladies in my district had questions about how it would affect them when they want to borrow a book.  When looking up a book by title or by subject, or even by author, it will work the same way as before.  Just the call number will be different.  Since I will be the one pulling books it only affects me.

I did a lot of research on this topic before I made this decision.  I'm still a little scared but mostly I'm excited.  It is going to be a lot of work.  I'll post updates so you can see how I'm doing it.