Genres and formats in the library

Genres can be easily confused with formats when discussing literature for all ages. The primary genres are "Fiction" and "Nonfiction", although each has subgenres as shown in the infographic below.

Now, there could definitely be more subgenres included, such as myths, folk tales, and legends under Traditional Literature. However, each genre and subgenre is based on the purpose of the writing and in the case of fiction subgenres, whether or not the story could happen in real life. Essentially, nonfiction is based on facts and intended to give facts. Fiction is a story made up from the author's imagination.

Formats differ from genres in a number of ways. I was surprised to learn that poetry is considered a format, rather than a genre. However, if you consider it, a lot of interesting children's poetry is actually fiction. Take Love That Dog by Sharon Creech for example. It tells a wonderful tale through poetry about a boy named Jack. Similarly, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson is a poetic memoir that traces the poet's childhood as a daughter of the North and the South. Brown Girl Dreaming is nonfiction; Love That Dog is fiction. And yet both are poetry. I will have to reevaluate the way I teach my students about poetry!

Primarily, readers seem to define books by their subject matter, and if they do, then they are referring to a book's format rather than the book's genre. And this is fine for Barnes and Noble, but is it really appropriate for a library? I am NOT a fan of "genrifying" a library and recently went to a public library that had been "genrified". I was surprised to note how intensely I disliked the experience, mainly because I couldn't find anything. My personal opinion is that the Dewey Decimal System does enough "genrifying" and the rest can be handled with the OPAC. My only concession would be to put titles in a popular series in one place, but to me, that differs from reorganizing a library with a perfectly good organizational system (the DDS) and assigning it a nonstandardized system. Your thoughts?

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