Genresfor

Genresfor is a cross-media genre taxonomy and community-curated database designed to classify items across media such as film, literature, music, comics, and video games. The project seeks to provide consistent genre labels to improve discovery, comparison, and academic research, while allowing contextual notes and user-provided annotations. The name combines "genres" with "for" to emphasize that genres are defined to serve specific interpretive or informational purposes rather than as fixed labels.

Taxonomy and data model: Genresfor organizes items in a hierarchical structure with top-level genres and multiple subgenres. Each record includes fields such as title, medium, primary and secondary genres, tags, audience, language, release date, and source. The system supports multilingual labels and crosswalks to other vocabularies like genre thesauri or metadata standards to facilitate interoperability.

Governance and access: It is described as community-driven, with open contributions reviewed by volunteers or curators. Data may be released under an open license to encourage reuse, adaptation, and extension. Contributors follow guidelines to document criteria for genre assignments and to note contextual factors like audience intent and cultural context.

Applications and critique: Libraries, publishers, streaming platforms, educators, and researchers use genresfor to standardize search and filtering, create curated lists, and study genre evolution. Critics caution that genre assignments reflect subjective judgments and cultural bias, and that boundaries between genres are porous and constantly shifting. Ongoing work focuses on better handling cross-genre works, language diversity, and regional differences.

See also: genre theory, metadata standards, controlled vocabularies, taxonomy, information retrieval.