School librarian Tom Bober is a master at
developing innovative ways to share nonfiction with the students and teachers
at his school. In 2020, he created a delicious lesson for exploring
active nonfiction with
students and, in 2021, he incorporated the teaching strategies and author
essays from Nonfiction Writers
Dig Deep: 50 Award-winning Children’s Book Authors Share the Secret of Engaging
Writing into nonfiction
reading and writing instruction across the grade levels.
Today Tom is back to describe a project he’s
been working on for quite a while—color coding his entire collection based on
the 5
Kinds of Nonfiction classification system. Wow!
Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Tom.
If you visited my library, walked
into the nonfiction section, and looked down the aisles of bookcases, you would
notice the colors. Pink, orange, green, red, or yellow labels cover every spine.
I’ve recently finished a project organizing the library’s nonfiction collection
using the 5
Kinds of Nonfiction (5KNF) classification system.
Looking back, I’m glad that I took
on the task. It was necessary given our collection and how students and
teachers were wanting to use it, and it benefited our nonfiction collection in
several ways. Looking forward, I’m excited for the possibilities that this new
organization will allow.
Why Organize Nonfiction Using 5KNF?
Our school has been teaching into
5KNF for several years. Each year, students had lessons to increase their awareness
of different categories. Collaborations with teachers have included ideas about
how 5KNF could impact nonfiction reading and writing units. And as I’ve added books
to the collection, I’ve kept the five categories—Active, Browsable, Traditional,
Expository Literature, and Narrative—in mind.
As a result of these efforts, students
and teachers regularly ask for nonfiction books based on 5KNF:
“Where are the browsable books?”
“Can you pull a selection of
narrative nonfiction for students to read in the classroom?”
“Are there more books that teach you
how to do things?”
I had no easy way to direct students
to these books, and they had no way to direct themselves. I could pull titles for
teachers, but I knew they’d get more out of the collection if they searched on
their own.
Visually organizing the collection
according to the 5KNF allowed all of us to browse for these specific book
categories. Placing category-based lists in our library management system has aided
online browsing and searching and made it possible to run circulation reports for
each category.
The Journey to Organize the
Nonfiction Collection
Organizing the nonfiction collection
according to the 5KNF didn’t mean that I wanted to physically sort books by
those categories. Our nonfiction collection is organized by Dewey. Instead, I
decided to put colored labels on every book spine. This allows students to
browse both by Dewey and by 5KNF.
To label the collection, I needed to
touch and evaluate every single book. In some cases, it was easy. An entire
series could be labelled after looking at just one book. Cookbooks or craft
books were quickly labeled as active nonfiction.
Evaluating other books took more
time and was revealing. Some of our video game books actively teach readers how
to play the game while others provide a more traditional nonfiction overview of
the game. Some books that appeared to be breaking the mold by outward
appearances had a very traditional structure.
Many titles were mashups. For
example, a book may have step-by-step directions for a science experiment as
well as an overview of a science concept. In these cases, I labeled the book
based on the predominant approach.
Labeling books also allowed me to informally
evaluate the collection beyond the yearly reports I run. Opening almost every
book helped me identify titles with photographs and illustrations that looked outdated.
In some books, the information was too dense for the current preferences of
most of our readers. I weeded more than 100 books to keep the collection relevant
and appealing.
Spending time thinking about how
students access nonfiction books led to other changes. In addition to our
standard nonfiction area, we already have separate sections for early reader
nonfiction as well as oversized nonfiction that doesn’t fit on our regular
shelves. As a result of this project, I also created a picture book nonfiction section
to give all of our readers, but especially our youngest, a spot to easily find titles
that are engaging and perfect for a parent to read aloud. And I created a
series nonfiction section that pulls together titles that were previously spread
out when organized by Dewey.
I spent months of spare time in my
library viewing, color coding, and reorganizing books in the nonfiction
collection. Then it took a few more weeks to enter the titles into our library
management system so that we could get circulation data. Now that this project
is complete, I’m excited about what is to come.
Moving Forward with 5KNF as an
Organizational Tool
We continue to teach the 5KNF to students,
and that language is now fully integrated into our conversations about books. Just
as I may ask if students are interested in a certain fiction genre to help them
narrow down their browsing, I can also ask if they want to read a certain type
of nonfiction. And they often have preferences. Browsable and active come up
most often, but there are also requests for narrative, expository literature,
and traditional. Sometimes students share what color label they want to read,
and that works well too. Ultimately, it gets them to the book they want to
read.
Placing the titles in the library
management system by 5KNF category has opened up new ways of viewing the collection.
I can see what categories are most popular overall as we as what books within a
category are most popular. This information helps me decide what books to
promote and where purchases need to be made. I’m sure there is even more useful
data that I can gather that I haven’t even thought of yet.
Ultimately, this project around the
5KNF has given me a much better way to look at my collection. It has given
teachers better ways to access the nonfiction in the library. And most
importantly, it has given students a new way to find the nonfiction books they
want to read.
Tom Bober is a school librarian, 2018 Library Journal Mover and
Shaker, former Teacher in Residence at the Library of Congress, and author of
the book Building News Literacy: Lessons for
Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in Elementary and Middle Schools as
well as his earlier title Elementary Educator’s Guide to
Primary Sources: Strategies for Teaching. He writes the
Picture Book and Primary Sources blog posts for AASL’s KQ blog and hosts The Primary Source Podcast.
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One Response
Thank you for sharing your experience and how it has transformed the library experience for your community. I have a hard time with the difference between "expository" and "traditional", so I really go with four genres in non-fiction. Your labeling system rather than separating them out is an avenue I might pursue. I've been trying to figure out how move forward with non-fiction genres and this might be a good way to make some progress.