The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
I work at a mid-size public library. Currently, short story collections by a single author are shelved with the rest of that author's work in the regular Fiction section. I am thinking of moving them to the short story section. My thinking is that it is easy to find an author's work, so shelving single author collections with the rest of the short stories will make it easier for patrons who want to browse all the short stories. Has anyone implemented a change in either direction, and what effect did it have on circulation?
Jenny Arch
Every community is different, but at the last library I worked we moved short stories out of Dewey literature and into fiction, and circulation increased. An Emma Donoghue fan may try her short stories if they are sitting next to her novels but is unlikely to browse in the literature section for such. In our community, we do not seem to have a lot of dedicated short story readers; we definitely have a clientele that selects by browsing more often than by catalog search.
Your ILS reporting options may allow you to check how your short stories are circulating currently in the two areas. It may not be straightforward - you may have to pull the data into spreadsheets to manipulate. I just ran a report of our two areas for lifetime circulations - 17 for literature (once per year - they tend to have been in the collection longer) and 20 for fiction (2 per year). In general, our fiction materials check out 7 times each per year.
I think there are more "fans of x author" that want more of their work then their are "fans of short fiction." I would suggest continuing to shelve short stories by author in fiction, but also doing regular displays highlighting the availability of short story collections by individual authors. I have done something similar to highlight the nonfiction books about the works of popular authors like Stephen King, Diana Gabaldon, etc., and circulation has increased.