Collection Reflection

Does your library carry books in foreign languages? Not just language learning, but actual text in different languages? Many libraries do and yet, people are often surprised to find books in German, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, etc. on the shelves. We carry books in a variety of languages, from the very popular (Spanish) to the more obscure (Urdu). We have 18 titles in Urdu text, all of which have circulated more than once. We have 247 Korean language books in the collection, many of them new titles, with varying circulation stats. Some have gone out multiple times, some not at all. Because we have a floating collection, we do not have to assign books to certain branches around the city. This is a great thing for foreign language books because we haven't found any good ways to find out, in branch service areas, what languages are most popular. There is anecdata about this part of town being heavy with Russian speakers, and that part of town having lots of Chinese speakers. Spanis...

So, when I started making notes for the LJ presentation next month, of course I wrote down WAY more than I have time to use in 10 minutes. I think (I hope?) I used the best stuff for the slides, but no reason why we can't discuss the same things here too, right? Of course there isn't. I was thinking about permanence and the digital collection and how we shouldn't think of buying into this format (whatever format we might be using) as an endpoint. Who knows what might happen in the future, right? But this isn't an idea that is unique to downloadable audio/ebooks! How many cassettes (audio AND video) did we have to replace with the next format? Before cassettes, many libraries had records. There was probably some crazy library out there that circulated 8-tracks (oh please, fess up, I'm dying to know who you are!). Publishing companies would love for libraries to believe we're buying this digital format and it will last forever, but we all know that isn't li...

This post is part of the larger Library Day in the Life project--I thought it would be fun for Collection Reflection to participate. Because I work with the public, I never actually get to spend an entire day doing collection development, so I'm going to describe the bits and pieces that got done over the course of this week in the midst of desk time, class preparation and teaching, and whatnot. My library's collection budget has been cut to the state minimum requirement (as selectors, we haven't yet been told how this will play out, only that it's very bad) and has not yet been finalized. Therefore, we have been preparing carts for the last month or two without knowing when the items will be ordered. What this means is that books I have selected, some of which have subsequently appeared on bestseller lists, are not yet available to patrons. However, the selection process--like the show--must go on. I am hoping that the books I've selected will still be in dema...