Perception Matters

Richers, Katherine

 

Powers, B. (2016). Perception matters: What message are we sending to faculty with departmental book allocations? Collection Management, 41(4), 221-227. doi: 10.1080/01462679.2016.1242443

 

Summary:
In this article, the author focuses on how the faculty of a university can help build a collection as well as how changing budget allotments can bring libraries more in line with their modern-day purposes. Do budgets accurately reflect types of materials in the library? Some have tried to shift the focus of the budget from acquisitions to access.  She looks at the possibility of eliminating departmental budget allocations, and notes how the college where she worked did not adequately reach out to faculty on the subject. The library sent out emails about the book collection and did not explore anything different for other collections. Librarians and faculty at her college rarely went over budget so rethinking the allocations would not have been too problematic. In 2016, the college finally restructured their budget to encourage faculty to work with librarians to develop subject-based collections in different formats.

 

Evaluation:
All the budget politics were confusing, but I understood it. Thinking back to the Sammonds and Housewright article I posted, I think physical books are too closely associated with libraries. While I am a great fan of books and I believe that we should have analog materials, the prevalence of the internet and electronic formats demands differ materials. The college’s library should have emailed the faculty about more options besides the book budget.

 

 

 

 

Guides to Collection Development for Children and Young Adults

O'Brien, Sarah 
 

Book Review 

Gillespie, John T. (1998) Guides to Collection Development for Children and Young Adults. Libraries Unlimited (191 pages)

The essential handbook about collection development for children and young adults, John Gillespie has compiled a bibliography of bibliographies, indexes and professional reference material for any librarian who is focusing on building a bigger and better juvenile and young adult collection. This book is divided by sections covering periodicals, sources for children and young adults and sources for professionals. This expansive annotated bibliography is both detailed and extremely valuable for librarians. This book is highly recommended for anyone studying and researching Children’s Literature and more.

First extracted from the references from the Virginia Kay Williams article I previously wrote about, I ended up buying this book for myself to continue my education and research into juvenile collections. This is an excellent and easy to use handbook that should be on every librarians shelf, it provides access to bibliographies, indexes and professional reference material. As a graduate student studying Children’s Literature and Collection Development, this book would have been extremely valuable during my earlier courses, why my Children Lit professors did not include this handbook, I don’t know!!! As a future Children’s Librarian, I know this book will become extremely handy and helpful  throughout my career.

The Educators Guide to Pinterest

O'Brien, Sarah

Muther, Sarah. (2015) The Educators Guide to Pinterest. Edudemic: Connecting Education and Technology. 

Now that learning is happening online, it’s no surprise that bulletin boards have moved online, enter Pinterest. Teachers, Librarians and Educators use the Platform for many reasons including staying organized, planning projects or collecting material for class discussions. Librarians are running reading programs and creating book lists on top of using it for creative purposes like story times, crafts and (actual) bulletin boards. With a guide for educators on how to use the application, Sarah Muther, provides an in depth outline including planning lessons, fostering collaboration, sharing ideas and providing a list of pinners to follow.

Although this article is very brief in its explanation on how librarians can use the Pinterest application, from the perspective of the (almost) children’s librarian at my library, I use Pinterest for a lot of ideas, whether working with volunteers or using it for personal projects. As the Youth Service Coordinator, I use it to build upon story hour and bulletin board ideas. The author points out that librarians use Pinterest to build book lists and even run reading programs. Just recently, I noticed an adult program called the Pinterest Club, I couldn’t help but join in. There are so many great ways to incorporate Pinterest into the workplace and the library is an excellent place to connect resources and information back into the collections and programs.    

Book Trends and the Future

O'Brien, Sarah

Kellogg, Carolyn. (2016) Six Book Trends for 2016: Look Into The Future. Los Angeles Times.

Although this article is not directly about libraries and their collections, I think it is important to implement the trends this writer suggests. It was reported that 571 million print books were sold in 2015, while ebooks sales stayed at 25% this past year. We all worry that print is dead, luckily this statistic proves otherwise. With print books coming back, Harper Lee’s much anticipated second book “Go Set A Watchman”, David McCullough’s book about the Wright Brothers and Jeff Kinney’s Diary of Wimpy Kid Series, along with the spike in coloring book sales, print books are on the way back, which means libraries are getting busy. With magazines going by the wayside and bookstores closing left and right, libraries are full of titles and material just waiting to be discovered. With box office success like Star Wars, Harry Potter and highly anticipated television shows like Game of Thrones, the fantasy doesn’t stop after two hours. Publishers and Marketers want to keep fans in the loop, buy Game of Thrones action figures and games, visit theme parks (have you been to Harry Potter World yet?) and stock up on every book ever written about Star Wars because it’s out there. It’s not just about the movie experience anymore, we live in world where we can further explore the worlds that authors create.  And although journalism is taking new shapes, we know that with the success of podcasts like Serial, the Netflix original docu-series, Making a Murder and the fantastic reporter and sensational nonfiction writer, Jon Krakauer, it’s clear that deeply reported nonfiction stories have a ready audience.  The last point that is brought up in this article is a call to diversity in books. Toni Morrison was the last American award the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, as our country becomes more multicultural, it’s important that we have something for everyone.

Again, this article is not really discussing these trends in the library setting but I think it’s important that these trends can be used as connections to make library collections stronger, programs/events bigger and better and make the library experience as a whole an important part of our weekly routines. This article can serve as an excellent guide as we think about collection development and programming for the future. With the release of the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, many libraries are adopting a whole festival celebrating the world and characters George Lucas created. The same can be said with diversity in literature. This is something that we have been struggling with for years, as a Children’s Librarian I am constantly looking to publishers that focus on diverse stories and searching for authors of different ethnicities. In fact, I came across this blogger and author from London, Ann Morgan and her quest to read books from all over the world. Looking to the future of libraries, all these points and trends that the author brings up are very relevant to sustaining successful libraries.  

Transparency and Weeding

Weeding can often be taken for granted, part of operations but can often happen as usual business. This article takes a second look at how libraries make decisions about books that removed and at times discarded from collections. In some circumstances, public showed resistance to the idea of books being thrown away. Throwing away books has been offensive to people generations, and can at times imply different intentions. Some believe to weed books is a waste of tax payer money, others think that books should be treated with special care, and should never be thrown out. In order for circulations to run smoothly, as all librarians know, it’s necessary to weed. Author Ian Chant writes, “When a lot of titles need to be weeded at once, communication is key. Being transparent about the decisions being made and the thought process behind them—and getting ahead of the story—can help prevent a library’s otherwise supportive public from becoming upset when a number of books need to go (Chant, 2015). In addition to transparency, new approaches on how to weed are reviewed. For damaged books, Chant finds groups who have turned the damaged material into craft projects. Other libraries set up a system with online booksellers who will buy the weeded titles in bulk and sell them for commission. A recommendation in the article is to try to weed on a daily or weekly basis, and that it’s best to avoid weeding once a year. It’s interesting to consider the meaning of weeding for the public, and to make sure librarians look into different options for the books that have been pulled. 

Reference:

 

The Art of Weeding | Collection Management

 Ian Chant on June 23, 2015 

 http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/06/managing-libraries/the-art-of-weeding-collection-management/#_

Collections for Millenials

There’s a lot our culture hasn’t defined pertaining to Millennials. This generation is the first to grow up with developed web-access. Millennials like to read books and libraries are taking notice. As a result, it should come as no surprise that 50% of millennials confirm having used a public library in the last year, a slightly higher total than the 47% of those over 30 (Zickuhr & Rainie, 2014). In Kaser’s article, “Millennials: The Future of the Public Library”, it’s suggested that the book industry and libraries are slowly coming around to cater to this age group. A new genre called New Adult focuses on twenty year olds, while broad, it focuses on the interests and experiences of Millennials. Kaser observes that many libraries have a children’s section, young adult section, and adult section, but for now, few libraries offer a section that specializes in Millennial interests. Initially, there wouldn’t be a reason too, but, as we see a developing reading audience that habitually uses library resources, having a section designed for a positive user experience may not be a bad idea. Kaser ends her article by asking libraries what they offer for this impressive population of library patrons. After reading her persuasive article, I intend to keep an eye on this generation and how and why they use libraries.

Finally, Kaser leaves us with one question: Has your library created any specific collections or programming to cater to millennials?

References:

Millennials: The Future of the Public Library

Kaser, Gretchen, December 29, 2014

[1] Zickuhr, Kathryn, and Lee Rainie. “Younger Americans and Public Libraries.” Pew Research Internet Project (2014). Web. 25 Oct. 2014. <http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/09/10/younger-americans-and-public-libraries/>.

http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2014/12/millennials-the-future-of-the-public-library/

Library Collections that Impact Communities

I’m inspired by the limitless potential of library collections. Working as an Early Childhood Educator has developed my interest in resources for this critically important and sometimes overlooked subject. The excited aspect of ECE is that it’s still emerging with positive goals that are easily obtainable through time and funding. Minnesota is home to an organization called, “Think Small”. The focus of this agency is to promote child development services, resources, and advocacy for early education. Those most interested in these resources are often educators and parents. Small business owners who often operate child care services from their homes have a single place where they may find resources for all sorts of topics related to the health, education, and development of children. Curriculum materials for young children ranging between infancy through preschool can be found in the collection. Librarians are available to put together materials for a  patron’s specific interest to support their lesson plan for their early learners. Think Small is visionary enough to design an entire library collection that is centered around child development and education. The Debra S. Fish Library is a library that is exclusively dedicated to early education. Think Small is home to the Debra S. Fish Early Childhood Library. You will find over 5,500 exceptional early childhood materials on a variety of topics: child development and learning, the business of child care, parenting, SIDS, and much more. What’s even more impressive about this collection is the use of the space. This library is new, and streamlined to project the essence of the subject-matter within. Anyone with a library card can check materials out from the collection, and this collection alone has improved child care and early education directly throughout its community. I would like to see more models of libraries that are community-based and dedicated to a specific mission.

If you’re interested in exploring the Debra S. Fish Library, please visit:

http://www.thinksmall.org/for_early_childhood_professionals/debra_s_fish_library