Collection Reflection

So, lately, the "ebook revolution" and librarians have reminded me of the Farm Bureau Insurance commercials making the rounds. I don't think they are regional commercials, but in case they are, here is an example: Librarians are knocking on wood when it comes to their electronic resources. The Penguin saga is just one more example that we need a course correction in how we're approaching this issue. The problem isn't Penguin. They are a for-profit company and are acting in their own best interest. The problem isn't Overdrive. They are also a for-profit company and also acting in their own best interest. The problem is we have jumped into this marketplace without knowledge and we keep expecting other companies to take care of us. We expect Overdrive (and Penguin, and Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan, and...) to be on our side, to make sure we are protected, when that is our job. It is our job to spend the money entrusted to us by our taxpayers. It is o...

In catching up on patron requests this week, I realized how often some of the same questions come up over and over again. The process of filling out a request is pretty easy, but you do have to log in with your card number, fill out a form, etc, so it isn't without some effort. I wish there was a way to tell a wide range of people that some requests are unable to be filled before they go through the trouble of making the request. That said, here are some things I am frequently asked by patrons: Why do you have some of a series but not all? Probably the question I am asked most often. The library collection is a not a static thing. Things go missing, get damaged, and get stolen all the time. So, the odds are good that we used to have book 2 of the series, but we don't anymore. I try to discourage people from discarding a series book if the other books in the series are circulating well, or if the author is still writing the series. Yes, most J.R. Ward fans agree that Lover...

In an earlier post , I suggested that perhaps writing about my intention to weed some parts of the library's collection would force me into action, and I am pleased to report that it has finally done so! The good news is that I was able to weed some items that were no longer being used by my library's service population, making room for new books that I've been ordering in the normal course of collection development. The bad news is that it took me more than two hours to find fewer than 50 books that I thought might be weedable and remove some of them from the collection. Considering that I only got through a few shelves (of the hundreds that await my careful attention in the 800-830 range), this is somewhat depressing. My goal was to evaluate and discard a manageable chunk of books. The steps were as follows: 1. Using my most recent export of statistics for the 12,000 books in that part of the collection, I created a subset of books with zero circulations in the past 1...

The Library Journal / School Library Journal virtual show Ebooks: the New Normal is this Wednesday. I hope lots of people plan to attend so we can continue the discussion and learn new things from each other. For once, I got my slides done early, but I still haven't quite figured out what I'm going to say about those slides...time is running out. I'm sure, at some point during the day, that HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan will come up. I didn't mention them in my presentation, so here are my (ever-evolving) thoughts... If the point of a for-profit company is to make a profit, holding your goods out of the marketplace is a dubious strategy. However, ultimately, that is their decision. I think libraries should stop wasting time begging companies to give them the opportunity to buy their products. Yes, it would be nice to be able to buy digital books from these companies, but my job is ultimately to fill the shelves, physical and virtual. That mea...

The Kindle-Overdrive beta testing news spread across the web yesterday like wildfire.  You can read about it here or here or here The Harris poll on E-reader use .  More ebook stats?  Yes, please.  Just ahead of Banned Books Week, which starts on Saturday,  B&N profiles a few "Classics Some People Still Love to Hate" The National Book Festival is this weekend and if you can't make it, C-Span has got you covered . ALA & AAP cage match to discuss ebooks .  Probably not in an actual cage..... 

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...

I was denewing books in the 800s recently, which gives me the opportunity to see how books on the "New" shelf have circulated in the 10-12 months between when they're processed and when they're put in the general collection. These books are featured in a very public area and theoretically have a greater chance of being noticed by patrons and checked out. I've been aware for a while now that books of poetry, while dear to my heart, don't enjoy much popularity at my library, even though they are featured on displays (as for National Poetry Month) and given the same time as other books in the New section. Most of the poetry collections I denewed the other day had circulated, but sometimes as little as one time. Is one circulation a victory? If a book costs a certain amount (after a library discount), and then we add the cost of paying people to process and shelve it, does one circulation make its purchase worthwhile? At what point does the balance swing in fa...