Meeting Authors -- Does this Impact Collection Development?

Find out by virtually "meeting" with the authors who are attending TLA, today!

If you meet an author, does that change the way you do your collection development work?

At TLA, there are dozens of incredible authors and illustrators in attendance. Perhaps you'll get to meet some of your favorites. Will that experience alter the way you choose books for your library?

Let's find out -- but virtually.

This link (also linked below) contains all of the online materials that TeachingBooks.net has in our library of resources about these attending authors and illustrators. All of the materials are absolutely free for you to use, and you do not need a TeachingBooks.net subscription to enjoy or share them. Just click on author and/or book resources that you would like to see, and voila... Meet the authors now!

http://TeachingBooks.net/TLA2011Authors

From this link, you'll find...

• Videos of some of the attending authors filmed in their studios,
• Audio recordings of them introducing their books,
• Audio files of them pronouncing their names,
• Ready-to-use lesson plans for their books,
• Video book trailers,
• and much more.
  

Will meeting them this way impact your collection development experiences? Feel free to let me know by visiting me at the conference, or by emailing me at nick@TeachingBooks.net

I hope that you enjoy these virtual connections to the authors and books attending TLA this year.

Twitter in Collection Development

There is so much information on the Web to help you consider the merits of books for your collection needs, including:

• Websites and blogs of reviewers
• Websites and blogs of publishers
• Websites and blogs of authors
• Websites and blogs of booksellers
• Websites and blogs of libraries
• Websites and blogs of friends....

Then there is Facebook, various book and library forums, wikis, and other community locations where people can share their opinion about books.

But what about Twitter? Is this is a useful resource for collection development? You might be asking if you should invest your time in this social media tool to assist with your work. Is it worth while? My answer to this, like other information sources, is it depends.

Twitter for me is like an ESPN highlight tape of the baseball games played last night: brief exciting moments, lacking the context which to me is the ultimate beauty of the art form, but offering enough pizzazz to get one interested. And because I love baseball (and books), I like this stuff.

If you want to explore Twitter to see if it can support your work here are a few suggestions.

• First off, signing up is easy and free. You can do that at http://twitter.com

• Choose to follow individuals and organizations that you feel will offer authoritative information to assist with your work. This could be @goodreads, @PublishersWkly, @sljournal, @ALA_Booklist, @HornBook, or individuals like @joycevalenza or @CynLeitichSmith

• When you go to someone's Twitter page, read the description they gave for their work. Also look over their recent Tweets, and see if these bits of information resonates with your needs. If it sounds appealing, then follow them.


• Once you are on someone's Twitter page that meets your needs, see who else they follow (or who else follows them). You'll probably find people you also want to follow, and they might even follow you... and so forth.

As for the tweets themselves, here's some thoughts on the anatomy of a Tweet.

• You get up to 140 characters of information.
• It starts blank. 140 characters to go.
• Text. This should be snappy and intriguing -- and don't expect it to contain the book title or the authors' name, because those can take a lot of characters.
• Use lots of shortcuts and don't worry about using proper sentence structure. Writing Tweets reminds me of how I text on a phone -- using as many shortcuts as possible (so that I don't have to keep thumbing my way through a thought).
• Link. You should know that this takes a minimum of 12 characters, but links usually are 20ish characters long. If you see something called TinyURL or bit.ly, these are free services that can shorten a long web address to a 20ish character link.
• Hash tags. You'll see #TEXT within many Tweets. These are searchable tag fields, enabling users to find all relevant tweets for specific issues or gatherings. For example, #tla11 will be on all tweets that are relevant to the Texas Library Association 2011 conference. For children's books, my favorites are: #kidlit #yalit #reading #books #writing #poetryfriday #poetry #childrensbooks

Summary: Twitter might help you learn about articles and resources on the Web that can support your collection development, but I doubt you'll get enough information on Twitter itself.

To end, here are a few quotes about Twitter that I culled on April 5, 2011 from http://www.neatorama.com/2009/07/15/10-quickie-quotes-about-twitter/

"oh this is going to be addictive" - Dom Sagolla, Twitter co-creator

"The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful" - Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard law professor and Internet expert (Source)

"Using Twitter for literate communication is about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite 'The Iliad.'" - Bruce Sterling, science fiction writer and journalist (Source)

"Whoever said that things have to be useful?" - Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder and CEO

"HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY" - Oprah, yes that Oprah, on Twitter


Final thought: Feel free to follow my Tweets --- @TeachingBooks

Oops...Wrong Cookie

I thought I should talk a little about the blog that I post on, Oops...Wrong Cookie. I started this blog along with several of my colleagues as a way for us to continue our discussion of books that we were having in real life in a more public forum. It was a way for us to try to improve our writing skills (improved and still improving) and try out new things and share our love of literature with anyone who was interested in reading.

On that note, here are some of the things that we do at Oops that I particularly enjoy and am proud of.

Live Blogging:
Myself and another poster like to IM and chat during the ALA award broadcasts. Our reactions are immediate and uncensored, honest, and I think pretty funny. I especially appreciate these posts because my fellow poster moved to another state and we don't get to have these conversations in person any more

• Joanna and Patti React...to the Youth Media Awards
• Joanna and Patti Discuss...Mockingjay!
  

Review Award Series:
Sometimes you learn a lot when you review books in context to other books. Or when you read an entire series, or read an entire award list. At the Austin Public Library we do a yearly Mock Newbery and Mock Printz. I try to post reviews of all the books, sometimes two reviews (and to me those are the most interesting because I can actually track how my feelings on a book change), and then post on how the voting turned out and who won.

• Mock Newbery
• Mock Printz
• 2011 Alex Awards

Try out Different Review Formats:

• Full Length Reviews
• Short Reviews
• Haikus

Share Opinions:
That is the best thing about having a blog. You can share your opinion and have people agree and disagree and converse about books.

The online versus the live

I've run a mock Newbery group since 2003, when I was serving on the committee and wanted to have seed group for discussing eligible titles, as a way to practice discussing them and refine my opinions on them.  The following year, a local colleague served on the committee and mentioned she hoped I'd be doing it again.  Since then, I just never seemed to be able to not do it.   To me it's better than a bookgroup: it only meets once, and has the added wild-card elements of the intricate consensus voting procedures and the anticipation of the actual awards.  It makes for very rich connections with people in the area who share this interest, but with whom I may not interact with any other time of year. 

It is, however, a lot of work. So in 2006, I started the blog Nina's Newbery as a way to keep notes on titles, get ideas for titles, and communicate logistics with those interested in attending.  It was also the perfect narrow focus for me to experiment with blogging. In 2007, I chaired the Newbery committee, and my friend and colleague Sharon McKellar took over the blog and mock discussion, so that I could maintain neutrality.  In 2008 we were invited to move our blog to School Library Journal's website, where it became Heavy Medal.

Since then, the online mock Newbery discussion has become it's own beast, and I find myself having to refer to our "live" mock Newbery discussion to differentiate that event where a couple of dozen people all gather in the same room for a long Sunday afternoon.   Over the years, each venue has become more and more different in what it offers, and I think they serve as useful examples of the value in online versus live discusison in general.

The online discussion adds instanteonusness...a place for on-the-spot discussion when you want it, with whoever happens to be there.  It's only lightly moderated, and groundrules are nearly impossible to establish, as you never know at what point someone as entered the conversation.  When attempting to moderate or have a detailed discussion, it's very difficult to tell whether the other partcipant understands, pays attention, or cares, as there are no body language cues, and you have to wait for their response (if it comes) to see if they "got" it.   It works, but while the actual posting of comments gives you quick and anytime access to a conversation... actually having a productive conversation can take much longer, and expend much more energy (mental, emotional, physical--poor hands!) that a live one.  Given all that, in the end it's that unpredictability that keeps the online discussion unique and refreshing.  It will always offer different opinions that you have access to in person.

The live discussion adds efficiency to the conversation, but also depth.  With everyone committed in mind, spirit and body, to be in the same place at the same time to tackle a topic, you can cover amazing ground.  You can develop aspects of a collegial relationship that may have started online, but really gels when you get to meet each other face to face (oh, she pulls a funny face when she uses that catch-phrase! Or, it's not my imagination, she even looks like my mother. Or, oh well, she's married.). Where the online discussion doesn't lend itself to climatic moments (since everyone experiences it separately, and at different times) and tends to peter out at the finish of a season (sometime leaving me thinking, I'll admit, "can I do this again?")...  the live discussion offers a moment of shared triumph that is electric and silly-happy-making as we glance at each others' faces to trade surprise, pleasure, grief and satisfaction.  Though each year the preparations for this live discussion make me think, I'll admit, "why am I doing this again?"...at the end of it I always come around with: "Note to self: must do it again. Just do it."

In my own professional life I'm constantly strapped for time, and the balance of where my energy goes constantly shifts.  If I'm overly consumed with online discussions now, it'll be at the expense of getting together with colleagues face to face, and that balance will shift in the other direction over the course of months.  I feel strongly that each kind of interaction feeds my thinking about collection development in different ways, each equally important.   While access to live discussion is different depending on where you are, there are ways to make it happen. If regular local group meetings are just not possible, regional or national conferences offer intense doses of the live experience.   And happily, today, where the financial constraints hamper, online forums are there to pick up the slack.

RSS Feeds and Following Blogs

One of the easiest ways to read blogs is to subscribe to their RSS Feed (which stands for Really Simple Syndication - PC Mag). This means that you create an account with an RSS Reader.

There are different readers, but the one I use is Google Reader. It was a default choice. I have a Gmail account and my blog is hosted by Blogger (both are Google entities).

What a reader allows you to do is subscribe to multiple RSS feeds and gives you the power to organize these feeds by type. For example, you could organize your blog subscriptions with categories such as storytime, YA blogs, crafts, etc., which makes it very easy to scan your reader and decide what you want to read.

Basically, the advantage to using a reader is this: You don't have to keep visiting websites to see if they've updated their content, you can access your account from multiple computers (whereas you can't with bookmarks), you can organize the content, and it is easy and convenient.

Here is what it looks like to read something in your Google Reader:

What do you lose with a Reader? You will not see anything on the Reader outside the blog post. You will probably have to click through to visit the blog to actually comment. If a blogger has added content like something that shows their Twitter feed, you will not see that either.

To Lurk or Not to Lurk, That is the Question

What exactly is this "lurking" thing I'm referring to?

Well, part of joining the online conversation is to converse - and in the online world that can mean commenting on people's blog posts. A comment can let a blogger know you enjoyed the review or it can continue a discussion in further detail. Maybe you disagree with the review? Maybe you saw a key plot point differently? Like any book discussion, this can lead people to a different opinion on a book and that is one of the most exciting things about discussing books - no matter where the conversation takes place.

When people read online content and do not comment, they are called lurkers. It sounds a bit creepy, but, honestly, it really isn't. A person may find that they have enough time to read a blog, but not enough to participate more actively. Or maybe you're shy and don't feel that you have anything to add to the conversation. In full disclosure, I tend to be a lurker myself. I follow a large number of blogs, but rarely comment. And both of the reasons I listed above apply to why I don't comment more.

What would I get out of commenting?

The obvious answer is the more you participate, the more conversations you can have. The more conversations you have, the more you are likely to get a deeper understanding of children's literature. Which is sort of the point. We want to develop the best book collections for our libraries that we possibly can. We want to have a wide variety of books covering a wide variety of subjects and appealing to a wide variety of patrons with a wide variety of interests. It makes sense that the more we immerse ourselves into the resources available, the better our knowledge will become and that increase of knowledge will be reflected in the collections we develop.

So how can you get started?

For the comment challenged among us, MotherReader hosts a yearly Comment Challenge. Once a year participants are encouraged to comment as much as they can during a 21 day period. Why 21 days? According to MotherReader it is said that it takes 21 days to form a habit. More about the Comment Challenge from MotherReader's Blog:

What if I told you that for the cost of a few extra minutes a day, you can boost your blog readership, foster a feeling of connection, and make someone’s day? I’m talking about commenting.

For those of you who want to get even more involved there is an annual KidLitosphere Conference as well as the annual Cybils: The Children's and Young Adult Blogger's Literary Award.

Who Reviews - Part Two: Focus on Bloggers

So about these Bloggers...what exactly do you look for in a blog?

If you look on the KidLitosphere Central Blogger list, you're going to find a really extensive list of people who blog about children and teen books. Do you have to follow them all? You could if you have a whole lot of free time that you want to dedicate to it, but chances are you're going to find that you enjoy some more than others, that you agree with some more than others, and that some (if we're being honest) bore you.

Here is what I look for in a blog:

Opinion: The most important thing I want is opinion. I really want the blogger to be comfortable expressing opinions about the literature that they read. I find that many blogs only post positive blurb-like reviews. This doesn't interest me at all. If I want a blurb, I'll read the book jacket or peruse a catalog.

Thoughtful Reviews: Thoughtful reviews that can explain why or why not a reviewer enjoyed a book. I like to think that many of the bloggers have read From Cover to Cover: Evaluating and Reviewing Children's Books by K.T. Horning which is a fabulous resource. And I like to see that reflected in their reviews.

Voice: I have to admit it, I like snark and I like to laugh. One of the reasons that I love certain blogs (see Leila @ Bookshelves of Doom). I am much more likely to follow a blog when I see personality reflected in reviews.

Length of Reviews: This can really vary. Some bloggers I enjoy write really long in-depth reviews (see Betsy Bird @ Fuse #8), while some are much shorter (see Tasha @ Waking Brain Cells - previously Kids Lit Blog at Menasha Library). Both are great reviewers, but they have very different styles.

Regularity of Posts: Nothing makes me more sad then when a blog I enjoy stops posting (see Kelly @ Yannabe), especially when you had a nice give and take between your blogs. But it happens and then you probably need to search out new blogs (even if you're reluctant to take them off your blogroll because you're hoping they start posting again).

Feel of the Blog: Does this blog feel like it was written by a person who genuinely loves children's books or does it feel like a space for advertising said books? Are they constantly having "Blog Tour" type posts? Blog Tours (a promotional tool used by publishers) aren't bad in and of themselves - I've read interviews with authors on Blog Tours that were fantastic, but an overabundance of Blog Tour posts might mean that the person running the blog is more interested in free books rather than actually having a conversation about the quality of a book.

Authority: Do I want the writer to be a professional librarian? Not necessarily. What is most important is that you enjoy the writing, that it is thoughtful, and that the blogger does not mis-represent themselves. Before she stopped blogging, I particularly enjoyed Steph @ Reviewer X. Steph was (is) a teen who loved books and was passionate in her reviews.

Formal Vs. Informal: Oops...Wrong Cookie (my blog) is very informal and it is deliberately informal. It began as a way for several of my colleagues to try out this new blogging "thing" and communicate among ourselves in a public forum. I blog as a hobby in my free time and I like to express personal opinions. There are other blogs where the reviews are much more formal and impersonal and that is fine too. The important thing is that you enjoy the reviews and the style in which they are written and that if you choose to blog yourself that you find a voice and style that you enjoy.

Blogs with a Purpose: These are blogs that have posts during a certain time of year for a specific purpose. They can be a Newbery discussion blog (see Nina and Jonathan @ Heavy Medal) or can be for a fun contest (see Battle of the Kids' Books). Besides giving you something to look forward to, I find these to have some of the best conversations about books that you'll find on the Internet. This is probably because their purpose is to compare and contrast and really discuss the strengths and weaknesses of books.

Blogs Affiliated with Professional Review Journals: These tend to be a little more informal than the reviews published in the journals. Some don't review at all, instead are there specifially for people to discuss (see Roger @ Read Roger). Kirkus' new blog is more traditional in the sense that their posts are still review oriented, however they have gotten prominent bloggers to write for them. And unlike their journal - these bloggers have names attached (see various @ Kirkus blogs).

Who reviews?

The web has made opinion--on anything you're looking for an opinion on--more plentiful.   That should make our job of book selection (in which we depend on other's opinion's because we can't read every book ourself) easier, right?

 

Collection development criteria are different from library to library, but I'll hazard that there's a core set of "values" for selection of children's mateirals in public libraries (literary quality, accuracy, popularity, curricular and local value, timeliness, etc.), values shared on the whole by our cohorts in the professional reviewing media.  Thank goodness they all seem to be making the transition to at least the 2.0 world: School Library Journal, The Horn Book, Booklist ...and rising from the brink: Kirkus. Don't forget to subscribe to them though! Most of them still hide their true riches behind the pay window, and for good reason.  The reason they're reliable is that their expert staff's paychecks are reliable (we hope).

 

But we now have a wealth of free online opinions to peruse, and I often wonder: how are we evaluating the media that we use to evaluate media? 

Amazon seems to have been one of the first places where anyone could post a review. How useful for us? It's theoretically possible to identify reviewer whose taste you trust regarding children's books (for me it would take having read at least three reviews for three very different books which I also read myself) and "follow" that reviewer.  That's a lot of work for a set of unedited reviews that provide no context of criteria.  I sometimes find Amazon reviews useful when attempting to gauge a popular response to a title...when that criteria is the one still in question for my purchasing decision.  Even so, one has to proceed with extreme care: like Yelp or TripAdvisor, you have to start with the assumption that at least a fair percent of these reviews are planted; and then try to read between the lines to figure out what criteria the posters are using to evaluate the thing at hand.

Blogger reviews are a little easier to make determinations about: you can usually figure out who a blogger actually is, as well as their angle.  Many blogger reviewers are now being very upfront with who they are (doesn't have to be who they really are, as long as you get an idea of how they're approaching the literature), why they're doing this, and any criteria they have for reviewing.  I found a nice example on the blogroll at Oops!: Wrong Cookie ...  The YA YA YAs.  Right across the top are links for "About" (in which easy of three reviewers introduce some of their favorite books, giving me an idea of their personal tastes) and "Review Policy and Contact Info" ...as well as for a sampling of bibliographies of favorites.  Even the description of the blog  is informative:  "Three Young Adult Librarians blather about YA literature, YA librarianship, and maybe even the Yeah Yeah Yeahs."   A few things I can tell after my 5 minute perusal of this blog (I promise you I'd never looked at them before!):

1. Posts have been updated recently, and are frequent...but only by one of the three bloggers: Trisha, which means she's the only one I really need to pay attention to at this point. 
2. The blog title and description give me a hint about the age/angle of the bloggers, or at least the age/angle they'd like to be associated with. (The name of the blog is a pun on a band name (see Yeah Yeah Yeahs)). "Blather" is an informative word choice.  i.e., unedited.  Or: "this is unofficial, so let us play around a little bit." Fair enough.
3. The Review Policy indicates that this is not a "reviews for sale" blog, and the blog posts themselves use the current convention of listing the book source at the bottom of the review. So, this is a blogger who stays up to date on blogger review etiquette/ethics.
4. In peeking at the lists of "Our Favorite YA Books" I find that Trisha bucks the tendency of most enthusiastic "younger" YA lit critics (at this point I'm just going to plow on with my assumption about Trisha's age bracket):  she's actually got 20th century titles on her top 10 list! More than one!  This tells me that she's widely read.

All this making The YA YA YAs a blog I will probably take another look at. Which thereby illustrates another value of blog reviewers: the blogroll.  Find one you trust to lead the way to others. Blogger reviews, being unedited, take a little longer to get the meat out of. But: being unedited and longer, they can offer meat you can't get elsewhere.

Common Sense Media is an interesting example of an even more developed reviewing site that is radically different than the professional media we usually rely on...yet is clearly professional.  Relying on media and child development expertise,  they review books, movies, websites and other media that is being sold to kids, and provide ratings on "The Good Stuff: Educational Value, Messages, Role Models," and "What to Watch Out For: Violence, Sex, Language, Consumerism, Drinking/Drugs & Smoking".  Short summaries then go into a little more depth on "What Parents Need to Know" and what "Families Can Talk About."

Pat Scales's article in Booklist last fall provided an important perspective on Common Sense Media and its potential use as a tool by censors.  The organization seems to be responsive to being open about their process and not being co-opted.  The "Ten Common Sense Beliefs" on their About page are illuminating, as are their FAQs.   But as a public librarian whose first concern has to be the needs and desires of the community my library serves, I have to be more than a little concerned about the judgments made in the macro-level ratings of "On" "Iffy" and "Off" for age appropriatness, as well as the headings "The Good Stuff" vs "What to Watch Out  For."  Is there a universal "common sense" among our public about what's good and bad for kids?  I do find transparent information when I dig all the way down into the statments on how each rating was given, but note that this requires clicking for more information.  A couple of examples on how this bears out.

The Newbery Honor Heart of a Samurai received 5 stars for "Role Models."  Whose role models and why? I ask, and find out that:   

"Manjiro embodies both traditional Japanese values (such as a group work ethic and respect for authority) and touted American ones (ambition, self-reliance, individualism). He’s a wide-eyed traveler, eager to soak up all he can. Captain Whitfield is an idealized authority figure, fair and noble."  Ok, I appreciate that at least the values are actually couched within the cultures they come from. The book, however, also receives 3 "bombs" for violence and 2 "#!"s for Language... which turn out to be for violence and bad language on the part of the "bad guys" in the story, violence and language that are necessary in driving forward this story-based-on-fact, and necessary in developing the 5-stared "Message" and "Role Models".  Isn't this being alarmist?  Or is the point that kids at certain ages can either handle or not handle violence or language of a certain sort...a point that anyone who works with a diverse population knows to be dangerously reductionist?

 

Compare its ratings to the ones for Dork Diaries, which gets only 1 "#!" for Language:  "Suck," "butt," "puke," "crud," plus slang stuff like "glamtastic," "I was like, OMG!," "CCP" for "Cute, Cool and Popular," and "G-G-G-ing" for "giggling, gossiping, and glossing."  ...as well as only one figure for Role Models:

"Brandon, a side character, is the best role model in the story because he is true to himself, doesn't follow the crowd, and is kind, helpful, and thoughtful. Chloe and Zoe are good friends to Nikki, working hard to make Nikki feel good and to help her win the art contest. Nikki does ultimately earn attention for being her dorky self -- but readers may be too turned off by her product name-dropping and popularity obsession to really care."    Are parents supposed to be watching out for "OMG!"?   And "readers may be too turned off by her product name-dropping" smacks of wishful thinking on parents' parts.

 

What the ratings for both of these titles fail to take into consideration is WHY a child would read Dork Diaries versus Heart of a Samuari.  The benefits they get from each are completely different, so why should a single template of appropriatness of "good stuff" vs "stuff to watch out for" apply?  

 

And isn't the "why do they want to read it?" question one of the most important things we consider when selecting books for our library collections?  In this discussion here I'm not as concerned with Common Sense Media as a tool for parents. I do think it's a powerful tool, though I feel it's somewhat deceptive on the face. I'm more concerned with its use in collection development for libraries, because I'm sure it's being used.   As a gauge for particular values that particular parents may/may not respond to, it has use.  Beyond that, I don't believe it does.

Goodreads

I started a Goodreads account first to simply keep track of what I'd read. It comes in handy if you're one of the many librarians who suffers "brain freeze" in reader's advisory situations...or in that embarrasing situation where someone meets you at a party, finds out you're a children's librarian, and says "Oh! Perhaps you can help me! My nephew is turning 12 next week..." 

I quickly found out how fun it was to connect with a handful of friends and colleagues and to see what they were reading...and what they'd thought of books I'd read.   This is social-networking stripped down to its most basic for bibliophiles and offers a variety of ways to participate.  You can use "shelves" as labels to group your titles in various ways.  You can review books (and "follow" each others reviews) and recommend books to friends...join groups that work as online bookclubs, or create or vote on lists. 

Collection Development at OPL

At Oakland Public Library (OPL) in California, we have what we call "coordinated" collection development.  There is a juvenile collection development coordinator who prepares lists with input from all 19 selectors, but all selectors ultimately contribute titles to each list and place their own orders.   The benefit to this is that the librarian on-site has a direct connection to her collection, and that our collections are tuned to the needs of each community, while at the same time drawing on a larger pool of expertise.  The downside is that it does take time to manage 19 selectors in a collaborative process, and we're somewhat at the mercy of the technical/software capabilities of our vendors.  We make all of our selectors through Titletales (BWI, Book Wholesalers Inc.) which we find the most flexible.

Collection Development at APL

APL has a centralized collection development team, which means that one person orders titles for our 21 locations. For my several years I was the centralized collection development person who ordered Teen Fiction and Teen Non-Fiction. There are pluses and minuses to a centralized system – namely organizations like it because it is time efficient, it reduces the duplication of effort and makes book orders more streamlined which costs less money.

However, the downside to this model is that you loose the expertise of a person working inside of a branch who works with the collection on a daily basis. That person knows what is checking out and what is no longer popular. That person knows what they need new copies of and what is still in good circulating condition. One of the main challenges of centralized collection is how the centralized selector can tap into that local expertise while having one person order.

What Youth Services did, and it is something that I think we did (and still currently do) very well was to set up a way to maintain and tap into that knowledge. It wasn’t complicated and it was a system that even the most lo-tech among us felt comfortable with. We created a spreadsheet where librarians at branches could write replacement and new titles that they would like ordered for their locations. In teen and children’s collections having new copies of classics is a big part of collection development and this really helped me know exactly what needed to be ordered. I would go further and just check the catalog for other branches at the same time so that I could double check whether or not other branches needed copies as well and then do one order. (which is really one of the benefits of having a centralized collector).

Additionally, we designated a person to relocate books that for whatever reason were not checking out at one location. These books had to be in pristine “like new” condition. We would withdraw them from one branch, send them to the re-locator, who would then see if another branch needed that title. This helped our budget tremendously. Books were sent to other locations where they got a new chance of readership, collections were kept fresh with different titles arriving, and titles that were lost and stolen had a chance to be replaced without costing the collection budget anything at all. We used this to fill out series, to disperse duplicates, etc.

The other big part of collection development is keeping up with the hot new titles. Reading professional review journals is one aspect of this. The online conversation, which will be delved into in further posts, is the other.