Finding Fiction

It's Friday, and I expect a little more spark out of my blog posting titles.  So, I'm a little let down by the blah-ness of the "Finding Fiction" title.  But, I think the awesomeness of this post may make up for the title.

When I came to K-State as an undergrad, I was really excited by the idea of all the new books that I could read that we didn't have at the public library.  No, I wasn't excited by the textual analysis of Bleak House or the Advances in myrmecology.  I wanted fiction.  Fun stuff.  Good stuff.  Boy, was I disappointed.

Well, times have changed.  For a variety of reasons, we have fiction in our collection.  Graphic novels.  Mysteries.  Romances.  Fantasy.  Science fiction.  Suspense.  All sorts of fiction.  The key, though, is finding that fiction.  Most people are familiar with the Leisure Reading collection on Hale's 2nd floor in front of the Circulation Desk.  But today, I learned a trick to finding the fiction shelved in the rest of the collection: a subject search.  Yep, you can search for fiction book by their subjects.

So, if I wanted fantasy, all I'd do is go to the library catalog.  I'd enter fantasy fiction in the search box.  Then I'd choose Subject Heading in the Search by box.  Then I'd hit search.

That would take me to a screen that listed the subject headings, with two columns of numbers to the left of the subject.  The second number tells me how many books we have that are, in my case, fantasy. Clicking on the first number takes me to a list of those books.

Want to try it yourself? Below, are just some of the subjects assigned to fiction books:

• adventure fiction
• alternative histories
• autobiographical fiction
• bildungsromans (coming of age novels)
• biographical fiction
• Christian fiction
• domestic fiction
• fantasy fiction
• ghost stories
• graphic novels
• historical fiction
• horror fiction
• humorous fiction
• legal stories
• love stories
• medical novels
• mystery fiction
• religious fiction
• science fiction
• sea stories
• spy stories
• suspense fiction
• time travel fiction
• war stories
• western stories

Comments

[Jody]

FYI - This will not get all the books on those subjects because for many years subject headings were not added for fiction books in our catalog. This search does make it easier to find many of these books, however. Thanks.