At the recent Small Libraries Summit, one panelist mentioned that her library interfiled juvenile and adult nonfiction books. She said her community and staff liked the arrangement. Adult patrons could find titles of varying levels (and with richer pictorial works) shelved together and thus avoid the stigma of looking for materials at a lower reading level in the children’s department. At the same time, children who were advanced readers could find all the material on one topic in the same place. It also made shelving easier for staff. Materials were still catalogued and labeled as either j nonfiction or (adult) nonfiction, but they were put in the same collection area.
Whether or not you should adopt this kind of practice depends entirely on what makes sense for your community and for the physical space in your library. In small libraries with children’s and adult areas close together physically, it certainly seems advantageous to put all of these informational books together.
Some libraries, however, have very separate children’s and adult areas that are often on different floors. In these cases, it may be problematic to interfile nonfiction. Also, if shelves in the adult area are high, many nonfiction books may be inaccessible for many children. In addition, only including fiction in the children’s area sends a subtle message that these types of books are what kids should read, and this may inhibit those children (especially boys) who read only nonfiction. If it’s “out of sight” in a children’s area, a young nonfiction reader may not see the children’s area as a place for him. In addition, more and more of the nonfiction being published is recreational, rather than strictly informational. More children are seeking nonfiction books not for school assignments, but for reading pleasure. Putting these recreational nonfiction books written for children in the adult nonfiction area may make them harder to find.
In the articles I read on this subject, nearly every writer cited the advantage for the adult reader as the greatest benefit of interfiling juvenile and nonfiction. As children’s librarians, I think we can certainly see advantages for young readers, but we also must weigh lots of other factors in deciding whether this arrangement makes sense.
Our YA nonfiction and adult nonfiction are interfiled and while I agree that it probably does help adult readers (who may not understand the yellow sticker that is the only indicator of YA), I can’t imagine that it does the teens any favors. I wouldn’t even consider putting my nonfiction in with the adults’–even though we’re in a relatively small and open-concept library. The kids LOVE nonfiction and taking it further away from them is not good service to them.