Collection Reflection

Scribd to offer "For Dummies" books and will pay reference publishers when users browse the books . I didn't know Tess Gerritsen wrote Gravity . Diversity is not enough: on diversity in books and in publishing . The Top 10 novels inspired by Shakespeare.  Is YOUR library hosting Coldplay lyrics? More trouble for Queens library  Flavorwire has a list of "dark and twisty" books for fans of Flynn's Gone Girl Toronto library patron challenges Dr. Seuss' Hop on Pop . The Colorado ebook project enters beta testing , as per The Digital Reader How the Audies turned into the Oscars of the audiobook world. And that's the news!

E-book Publisher Power Rankings -- Very interesting. USA Today interviews Amanda Quick. In honor of Shakespeare's 450 Birthday, a host of posts about The Bard today.  10 Things you didn't know about Henry IV Cakespeare, in pictures.  (these are fantastic!) Shakespeare's five best insults The Shakespeare quiz: Do you know your Bottom from your Elbow?        If you don't do well on the quiz, you can get The Bluffer's Guide to Shakespeare to get sorted . 50 "everyday" phrases that came from The Bard. How The Telegraph marked Shakespeare's birthday 50 years ago . Shakespeare a 'cultural icon' abroad Is this REALLY Shakespeare's annotated dictionary from 1850? 10 things you didn't know about Shakespeare. James Patterson on how to write an "unputdownable" story . Literary fiction is just clever marketing . Brits and the book list extravaganza! 10 SF/F stories that editors are tired of seeing . (I'm deb...

How Salman Rushdie survived the Satanic Verses  fatwa. The 15 best North American novels of all time! (according to The Telegraph) ALA says that publishers and librarians are now playing nice(r) Veronica Roth talks Divergent  from the LA Times Festival of Books The LA Times Book Prizes People of color DO survive the Apocalypse. (but do we want to?) How to make someone hate reading. Book to tv adaptations: how much time spent per page. The real Alex from Orange is the new black  speaks to Vanity Fair . Literature's most famous meals Who shot JR killed Joffrey? Just for fun What Dewey Decimal number are you? The States most likely to survive a zombie apocalypse . Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan play The Newlywed Game  (and we all win!)

Game of Thrones  renewed for two more seasons . Do you want to watch the full 2.5 hours of Empire of Dreams , the documentary on the making of the original Star Wars  trilogy? A trailer for The Leftovers  the adaptation of Tom Perrotta's book for HBO. Early Stephen King novels to be re-released in special editions . In more SK news, How Carrie changed his life. When it comes to library websites, are we giving them what they want? There WILL be another Star Wars Reads  day in 2014 .  October 11. Anthony Horowitz opens the London book fair with words of wisdom What will Don Draper read in 1969? The Flavorwire guesses. You can't kill Archie! Jo Nesbo re-imagines Macbeth   (yes, please!) The Absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian  removed from an Idaho curriculum . In 2014. Just for fun: Dune re-created with giant gummy worms. Book inspired purses . Because, of course. A literary map of San Francisco

I'm in charge of ordering the adult graphic novels for my location and some of our eight branches. I took on this part of the collection several years ago, as well as responsibility for ordering nonfiction that falls in the 741.5 call number, which is where our catalogers put all the books on how to draw manga, comics, and graphic novels, as well as things like Peanuts and  Calvin and Hobbes . I "only" have $750 to spend a year at this location (and $100 per branch), so I only place orders twice a year. Your mileage may vary--I realize this is a bigger budget than many libraries probably have. Because we also have a young adult graphic novel collection and a separate collection down in the children's department, I can focus on titles that will be of primary interest to adults. The YA librarian orders many of the most popular superhero titles-- Batman , the infinite varieties of  X-Men , and so on--leaving me blissfully free of that budget drain. What if I'm S...

Step 1: Know your audience . This is the first step because it's the most important, and the one that you'll do constantly. This is an evolving step, and you never finish it. From the day you start until your final day in the job, you will be trying to know your audience. I have seen lots of people in this job get tripped up by this step. They think, because it's so basic, that it can slip down to a lower spot on the list. It cannot. If you remember nothing else from this blog, remember this: you can never stop getting to know your audience. It isn't static. Even if they are homogeneous in age, race, gender (which they aren't), that doesn't mean they are uniform in thought or taste. Humans have a natural curiosity about things, many things. They may approve or disapprove of those things, once they've experienced it, but that doesn't mean they don't want to know. Step 2 : Know your surroundings . There might be a library out there that can aff...

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...