Collection Reflection

This post was originally run by Kristi over at Books, Yarn, Ink, and Other Pursuits , but it is relevant to our interests here as well! She recently began working as a library director in western Massachusetts, and has been doing a lot of learning on the job. ________ Now that I have been here a year, I am starting to work on filling the holes in my knowledge about the collection. Over the last year I did accomplish some massive weeding projects throughout nonfiction, VHS, and books on cassette. We had some heavy-duty shelf sitters and overcrowded subject areas. The previous director loved nonfiction, but I have always been a fiction buyer and that was where I focused my efforts when I began working with the collection. Mysteries are the most popular genre here, but they still need to be weeded from time to time. I also broke out science fiction and fantasy into its own area. One thing I have enjoyed bringing to the library is more displays. We are a small library, but I have a b...

"Denewing" is the term I invented for the process of taking books from the new shelf and changing their status to, for lack of a better word, "not-new." Sure, I could farm the work out to other people in my library, but it's never been clear to me why I would when denewing presents the perfect opportunity to see what has been circulating, how many times, and (thanks to Evergreen, our new ILS) the last library at which an item was checked out. Plus, peeling stickers = therapeutic. Denewing is something I can do on desk while I help people with their various computer issues. Denewing also makes your new shelves look better. Because space is at such a premium in most public libraries (although regular weeding could help with that-- cough ), the New Shelf is the place where we have the best opportunity to showcase what we're buying and catch people's attention. The new shelf should be positioned somewhere where it will catch patrons' eyes and shout (it...

It's that time of year again. The end of football season. The Big GAME. You know the one. It's also a perfect time to talk about football books, old and new. And what goes better with football than...advertising? Well, that seems to be the most popular sideshow to the BIG GAME. The Big Ads.  Heck, we could even call them SuperAds. Greg Rosenthal from Around the League over at NFL.com did a list of favorite football books . The first book on the list, The New Thinking Man's Guide to Football by Paul Zimmerman is out of print, and doesn't appear to be available in a newer version than the most recent (1984) version. The list is wide ranging, though, and a great starting point for readers depending on their purpose. Are they coaching? Are they interested in players? Are they interested in knowing all there (or was) to know about the history of the game? This list is the place to start.  Bleacher Report's list is called "The 11 Football Books Any Tru...