Collection Reflection

Two years ago, I wrote a post on taking over collection development for the Young Adult video game collection at my library. A few things have changed since then, and some questions emerged which I thought it might be helpful to answer here. In the last year, I've been able to grow the video game collection at this location (kept behind the desk for security reasons) to a modest number of games. This means that when people come in looking for games I at least have something  to show them to confirm that we do order games. Sometimes managing a collection that's almost always circulating--and therefore intangible--is hard to market to patrons. I periodically remind my co-workers that we do have video games in the collection, and I keep my ears open when patrons are at the circulation desk. There's been more than one occasion that I've sprinted over there to let patrons know what we have and guide them through the process of putting games at other locations on hold. T...

I got this email from a staff member today. It may have made my Monday. It isn't about being a digital-only evangelist, it's about helping people (patrons AND staff) see things differently than before. It's about print, about digital. About audio. About Fiction. About Non-fiction. About librarians. About. Everything. That's why I come to work. "Cool! Thanks for sharing. And, btw, I think we’ve had a discussion or two about how much I hate e-books, got to have my hardcover books. Well… My husband got me a Kindle for Christmas and I thought, oh shoot, this is going to be wasted money. But I’ve got to at least give it a good-faith effort. So I picked a book— The Game by Tom (Hinshel) Wood, who is one of my favorite authors—and gave it a go. Tough sledding at first, but about halfway through I was sold. So much easier reading in bed at night; also easier reading when I go out to eat, takes up so much less space. There are only a couple of drawbacks I’...

Good Morning! Still thinking about what it means to be inclusive as a public librarian. I can't tell you how irritated I get when I see librarians talking down to the public they're supposed to be welcoming. That goes both ways, too. There is no reason to make people feel bad for liking esoteric or obscure things either. There is no reason to make people feel bad about anything they like, really. But, honestly, enjoying highbrow items doesn't carry the same stigma as liking "popular" materials. Some day soon, I hope we all just get tired of trying to prop up our own tastes by putting down everyone else. Huh. I'm too cold to reflect on anything else just now.

Good morning! As we heard towards 2014, I'm thinking about all the posts that I meant to post over the year. Mostly, all the questions that I've wanted to ask and never seemed to find the time to ask. Some of them will come around in 2014, I'm sure. But, for today, the question is about: Short Stories! Where do you put your short stories? When I first started here, we put short stories in the non-fiction number of 808.3. Which was the how to write fiction number. But, it was legacy cataloging, and so the number didn't change. Then, when we switched to putting short stories into the fiction (or genre) area with the rest of the fiction, there was a little consternation about the difficulty of finding  just  short stories. There were ideas of adding a short stories qualifier to the call number so that all the short stories would fall together at the beginning or the end of the fiction run. We didn't do that, but I have been forever curious since that conversation. ...

The end of the year buying season is in full swing! That means, of course, not much time for doing anything other than spending money.  But.....I think I can carve out a few minutes for some news, don't you? Diversity is NOT narcissism  (I can't believe we're still talking about this....) Another great response here   and here and here GoodReads best books of 2013 . Pick a genre, any grenre! Ebooks for libraries: still a ripoff . (it all turns to bitchiness in the comments...) 25 books that changed the course of history . The "Douglas County Model" gives libraries new e-book leverage . Audible (Amazon) buys the rights to 5,000 titles from the AudioGO catalog. (hmmm) The LA Times reveals their holiday gift books guide.  Weed your library!  Thank you. Speaking of libraries, Fresno, CA has an interesting concept: the 7-11 library 20 things that happen when you're a book nerd. (true facts) Is truth in genre labeling hard to come by...

There have recently been some big changes at my city library system. As of this week, seven of our branches will be open almost twice as many hours, and two branches will be closed. One, a one-room branch, is currently being  re-purposed by the city  as a Senior Center. The other will reopen in 2014, with much of its collection gone, as an " Express Library ." This Friday, all hands available will head up to the latter branch to pack away the items that our collection development head determined will stay, making room for the renovation process. In the case of a branch closing, thousands of library items have to go somewhere! Last year, we closed branches because of budget shortfalls and then reopened them months later. In the hope that funding would eventually be found, their collections were left mostly intact, although we did some weeding before they reopened. The ideal conditions under which to weed an entire library's collection quickly, in my opinion, include a cl...

NY Yankee star Derek Jeter is launching a publishing imprint . Random House integrates website with Pinterest. RIP Doris Lessing RIP Barbara Park The 8 best SF Steampunk novels of all time . (of ALL time?) Seems fitting that Star Trek would be he vehicle that introduces the Navigraphic AMC making a pilot of the Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon classic Preacher . (I pray this is awesome!) BuzzFeed has ranked every Buffy  ep from worst to first . (worth a look if you're a fan) Happy Tuesday!