We’ve nearly completed a huge change to our adult fiction shelves. We shelved all of the genres together—mysteries, westerns, science fiction—that had previously been shelved separately. Why did we do this? And why did we do it when we knew it might upset some of you? Hang in there and read why.

Last year, the State of Ohio made some major legislative changes affecting all Ohio public libraries. They succeeded in cutting funds and although it didn’t pass, they are working on legislation that ties our funding to our ability to keep adult materials completely separate from the areas children frequent in the library. Because this would be a major change, we knew that we had to begin transferring any of our adult collections located on the main floor of the library upstairs with the rest of the adult collection.

Keeping genres like mysteries, sci-fi, and westerns separate from the rest of adult fiction significantly reduces available shelf space, so we also made the difficult decision to interfile all the genres into one set of fiction for adults. Paperbacks are exempt only because of their size. We can assure you, it would have been far easier to leave the fiction filed as it was.

We will continue to place the spine stickers like sci-fi, mystery, historical, on existing and new fiction to help identify their genre. And, although it’s not exactly like browsing a shelf, you can do a keyword search in our catalog (computers located throughout the library) to sort out just the genre you want. The catalog will show you the book covers and a brief synopsis similar to (if not identical) what you’d find on the back cover or on the book jacket. We’d be happy to show you how. It’s important to us to make everyone’s library experiences a happy story. Unfortunately, the legislative changes have been hitting us hard and fast with barely time to react.

On the bright side, you might discover a new book or author that you really like. For example, if you only browse shelves of mysteries, you might never find that historical mystery, because it’s been shelved in an historical fiction section. Rarely does a book fit neatly into a single genre.

If you’re a browser and your section is gone and you’re upset, please ask our staff for help. Once you tell us what you usually like to read, we can make some author and book suggestions that are similar. Maybe it’s time to try out Novelist, the free book-finding tool we introduced you to last year. We’re here to help you navigate this change and we’re here to help you find your next read, even if you aren’t exactly sure what you’re looking for.