Over the next month or two our fiction collections may be in a bit of a mess!
The problem: Currently we shelve and classify our hardbacks separately from our paperbacks. Also, our paperbacks have single letters on their spines, our hardbacks have three-letter codes on their side. You have told us that this is confusing.
The solution: We are therefore going to shelve them together; hardback and paper back, side-by-side. And we’ll be adding the 3 letter code to the spine of every item (this code actually spells out the first three letters of the author’s name). We will keep the books in their genres (Thrillers, Romance, etc.), and even add a new genre for Historical Fiction (with a white dot). Plus the Horror genre will receive a makeover and will be renamed Supernatural.
This is a complex process, and may disrupt your trip to the library if certain parts of the collection become unavailable for a few hours. But in the long run we believe that finding the books that you want to read will become easier. Please ask our staff if you have any concerns.
Off the Shelf 
This is going to be great, what a good idea. Hardbacks are currently under-utilised, I think, many of us users simply don’t bother going to the hardback collection but if the books are ‘in our face’ as a result of this project not only will they be borrowed more – satisfying for the library staff – but it will give us users a much bigger selection of books to select from. A BIG job for staff but gee am I looking forward to the result. BTW, any plans for an ebook collection?
Glad you like the idea!
Ebooks are something that SA public libraries are currently looking at and hopefully we’ll have an easy to use Ebook platform before too long. No accurate timeframes at this stage though.