Day 3 - Graphic Novel Changeroo

Hamlet lives all by himself in the Shakespeare section of the library.

Today I visited my local/school library, Britannia .  I decided to work on the graphic novels section for assignment #1.  I kept thinking about Keith's comment that no two libraries are arranged the same.  Even if they try to follow the same system, the personality of the TL will change the cataloging arrangement.

This principle is already apparent in the Britannia Library.  Our high school TL is relatively new to the position and she has already made some big changes to the placement of the teen reading section within the little bit of space the VPL provides.  All  of her moves have been positive in that they brought the teen books closer to the front entrance of the library and moved them away from the areas where people are working on computers or studying quietly.

My goal, in theoretically changing the graphic novel section, is to think of a way that the works can be arranged so that they encourage a broad range of borrowing from teen readers.  Also, I want to think about how the novels can be organized in a subject oriented manner so that classroom teachers will want to use them to supplement their curriculum.  Currently, stand alone graphic novels appear to placed randomly on the top shelf while manga series are placed in sets on the lower shelves.

Also, graphic novels are in more than three places in the library.  There are children's graphic novels, teen graphic novels, adult graphic novels, and the odd novel is scattered throughout the non-fiction section as it relates to a topic.