Back in the 80s, I remember vividly my Year 1 teacher explaining our school library. “Here are the fiction books – which are “made up stories” and here is our non fiction books which are book about “real things.” This misguided perception has followed my cohort all the way to Year 6. Fiction is “made up” and non fiction is “real” and the two will never meet.

But fiction is more than this limiting and dangerous classification. Even using the term “made up” connotes this perception that fiction is of a lesser value than its non fiction counterpart. As the readings for this week clearly show from  Leland et al. (2017), fiction is about imagination and wonder. It takes the reader on a journey (often in the narrative form) and has the power to evoke an emotional responses within the pages.

This week my eyes became broadened by the number of genres and formats in fiction. From post moderism, series, sustainability, POV even literary non fiction. The range of genres and genre sub sets is vast and wide and this has huge implications for the library collection.

Do we specialise in a limited number of genres to achieve a sound level of comprehensive depth OR do we have a scatter gun approach and pick a few pieces from each part?

So far from both the reading and my own experience, the question of quantity is not as important as the quality of the collection. A carefully selected collection has the potential to cover multiple genres without compromising depth and integrity. For example, texts from Claire Saxby can be genrified on sustainability but could also incorporate other genres such as literary non fiction.

I’m looking forward in this course to see examples of how librarians display these texts in their libraries. Also, how do they advertise and inform this to a school community as the research of Akins et al., (2018); Merga, (2015) and Burgess et al. (2011) all agree that there is a correlation between a knowledge of fiction and the quality of lessons/ discussions. And finally, do they use spine label stickers, symbols or dedicates special shelves?