The trend of average everyday people organizing, labeling, and sorting books and other materials through Web 2.0 is a great way for librarians and other professionals to really get a grasp on how items should be catalogued. It’s one thing to say a book should be shelved under adult fiction, or YA lit because a publisher says so, but it is another entirely to watch what people reading the book think about it.
For instance, how should a library shelve The Book Thief by Markus Zusak when the American publisher, thus American bookstores, places it in Young Adult, but originally it was released as an adult novel? I contend that a book of this nature be sorted into an appropriate section based on readership. Are more adults reading the book? Are more teenagers reading it? Does it need to be moved based on this information? The advent of Web 2.0 in the form of blogs, online sites such as Library Thing and Bookshelf, and other outlets makes a plethora of information available as to who exactly is reading what.
Another book I have noticed as a crossover from adult to young adult literature is The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Personally, I agree with bookstores and libraries that this is definitely an adult book, yet I see it constantly on YA lists. Of course, I feel many times this is due to its popularity as a challenged book. I would label this for adults in their 30’s simply because I know how much I related to it due to the time period it is set in. Anyone who has / had a copy of the iconic Kurt Cobain Rolling Stone in the 90’s can relate in some way. But I do see how teenagers adore this book as well; after all I wasn’t even born when Jack Kerouac was writing, but I couldn’t put On the Road down when I was in high school.
So what does this all mean for librarians? Basically, I feel that labels may be changing. With more and more wonderful YA lit published each year, and with the margins between what is adult and what is YA blurring daily, it seems it may become more difficult to pinpoint where books belong. Books may be shelved wherever the publisher places them in one library and another may begin to move books based on who checks them out. I feel the latter may be a good solution. After all, if 90% of your readership for a title is 17, does it matter that the book was published for “adults?” The book needs to be where the readers will readily find it, which may be along with other YA novels. Librarians may need to pay close attention to what is being said about books online as well to keep up with how books should be categorized.
Online, tagging may not always be more helpful than traditional subject headings, but it is surely simpler and more versatile to use. It’s great to be able to say as little or as much as is wanted while tagging an item. I feel tags can be quite helpful if used properly, but that is up to the person tagging which can be unpredictable. The one superior point of tagging is the ability users have to cross check and search tags for similar information that may be more difficult to find with traditional headings.
Overall, removing some of the control over labeling media from the professionals and placing it in the rapidly typing fingers of the mass population of Web 2.0 users seems to be a good thing as long as it is used appropriately.
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