Stowe Free Library

Visitors to the library on Monday will have noticed a change in our fiction section – all of our fiction is now filed together, rather than in separate fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and mystery sections.

 

A group of dedicated staff and volunteers helped make the big move on July 27, with the goal being to provide more shelving space throughout the collection. We have many mystery, science fiction, and fantasy readers, and we were consistently outgrowing the shelves we had for the collections, with nowhere to go. Almost our entire collection on the right side of the front of the library has been moved in order to allow collections to grow, making more space for biographies, audio books, and the entire fiction collection.

 

In the past, when we accessed our collections through the card catalog, most libraries shelved their genre fiction separately to provide easy access for patrons. Libraries in older buildings, such as ours, also tended to shelve separately, in order to make good use of quirky sections of shelving. However, as it has become easier to find the exact title you are looking for using an online catalog, and as collections continually outgrew their allotted shelf space, most libraries are moving towards filing the collections together.

This has been the trend here in the Stowe Free Library over the past several years: we filed our VHS and DVD together and our cassette and CD audio books, in order to begin the process of removing the lesser-used, outdated formats and noticing popular titles and duplicates; we also moved our circulating Vermont collection in with our regular non-fiction. Our juvenile, YA, and teen fiction has always been filed together.

 

Nationwide, the major use of collections “in the stacks” has been in looking for a particular author or title, whereas patrons tend to browse the new books shelves, looking for a title that catches their eye. We notice this same pattern here in Stowe, and feel that we now have a collection that will help patrons be able to see all of the works by a specific author, particularly because in the past, the books might have been split up in separate sections.

 

In fact, one of our volunteers, an Alan Furst fan, found a book he had not read when helping with the interfiling and moving – the one book by Alan Furst the library had put in the mystery section. Did you know Robert Parker wrote westerns? Or that Vermont author Sarah Strohmeyer writes a funny mystery series and “chick lit”? We’re excited by the element of serendipity we now have in our fiction collection – what books by a favorite author will you discover?

 

All of our science fiction, fantasy, and mystery titles will still have stickers on the side as they have in the past, so that if you are a patron who likes to browse the shelves, you can be on the lookout for the red or blue stickers. All of our science fiction, fantasy, and mystery titles will also continue to have SCI FIC, FANTASY, or MYS in the call number to help you determine the genre of the book when you are searching our catalog.

 

Over the next few days, we will be improving our signage, tidying up the shelves, and fixing the lettering at the end of bookcases, letting you know what you can find in each row of shelves. As always, if you need help, be sure to come and see us at the circulation desk. We’re here to lend you a helping hand!