Is it just me?

Or has everyone else's library gone crazy in the past week and a half?

Did summer camp let out or something? (e.g., I need to finish this summer reading now!)

Tags: libraries

Reference Desk

So, what exactly are you supposed to do with the woman who wants you to put her floppy disk into your reference computer and make some changes on her resume for her?

I first explained that I could set her up on a computer and get her file open, but that I wouldn't have time to sit with her. That was ok, she didn't want me to sit with her.

She wanted me to do it for her.

There were at least four people behind her (this was after I went back and forth trying to find the mailing address for Lego [hint: limit search to CT] for about five minutes and let the line build up). She said that I could see if all they wanted was to work on a computer and then I could help her.

In some ways I feel bad because we don't have tech people, we don't have a tech room, we don't have a good way to help this lady out if I don't help her.

However, I am the only person on the desk, and I don't necessarily have the time and freedom to help someone like this. If the phone rings, if someone has a computer question, if someone else has a reference question, I need to help them. And in my mind, those needs take priority over someone who obviously doesn't want to learn to use the computer herself.

I did help her, because I think it's my duty, but also because it was easier than arguing with her over it.

Tags: libraries

Summer Reading

(yes, you are seeing olives in Jell-o)

Summer Reading is over. We wrapped up with a pizza party last night. I had no guidance from previous teen summer reading organizers to have any idea of how many teens would show up. I got: "get the number of pizzas you need" to "lots of kids show up for free pizza."

The first comment is perplexing because it would be helpful to know that in the past they typically ordered four pizzas, or twenty, or six, or something.... I tried to be mathematical and use the number of kids who had signed up for Summer Reading (~80) versus the number of kids who actually in turned in hours and took part during the course of the summer (>45) and I ended up with the idea of 8 pizzas.

It was at least twice as much pizza as I needed. But, some of the girls were having a sleepover, so they took pizza with them, and another had a brother (who's a big reader and active in the program) who couldn't make it so she took a pizza, and another had some younger brothers who thought they were coming to pizza until I told them they had to be signed up for the Teen Program (this was my stipulation for the pizza party since June) so she took a pizza. And the rest went to the staff. And they didn't complain.

The photo above gives you a small insight into the madness and fun that was Fear Factor. Some weird things happened at the end of the night to almost sour the event for me, so I won't post about it at length. Needless to say, I'm keeping in mind that all the events worked better than I thought they would. You can see more photos here, alongwith other photos from library events and so on.

Tags: libraries, Summer Reading

Yet Another Post on Summer Reading Programming

So today I had a conversation with a patron about a Summer Reading Program I have coming up. It's the event for next Monday, where an editor from Bantam Spectra is coming in to talk to the teens. She wanted to know if she could come to the event.

I told her no and that the event was only open to teens. When she asked why that decision was made, I told her it was my decision. That it was part of the Summer Reading program I developed for teens and that I didn't want to open to the rest of the library patrons.

She then asked to talk to a supervisor. While this request normally makes my skin crawl, today it was even worse since my supervisor is out through next week. I knew that she would not be happy to hear that. The next person in line is the director, who has more important issues to deal with than this. I told her I was not able to connect her directly to the director and that she would have to call back to get through to her. The woman was in a rush for time and said she couldn't wait for that.

I tried to get out of her the reason for wanting to talk to a supervisor. She first claimed that it was not my concern (not exactly true since I assume she wanted to complain about me, but perhaps there was some issue she wanted to discuss that I could help her with), but then she said that she wanted to suggest that we have a program for adults on this topic.

I've had a lot of interest from adults in my two publishing programs, and I suggested to adult programming person that we run an adult program on publishing. Right now we don't have the space or means for that, but once the library's construction is done, we will.

She seemed surprised that I would not let her into my teen program. First, I have no idea who this woman is and I need to protect my younger patrons. This concept may surprise her, but I have to be distrustful of adults who want to take part in teen programming. What is their purpose behind wanting to be around the teens? Is it truly interest in the program, or is it something else? Second, as soon as I let adults into the program--as one of my colleagues correctly pointed out--the teens would be overwhelmed by the adult presence and get nothing out of the program. The adults would have questions and concerns that would be different from those of the teens and the adults wouldn't be shy about asking questions.

I was almost going to suggest she come by on the day of the event and I could see how busy it was going to be, but then I decided not to. I planned the Summer Reading program events for my teens. The events are not geared towards adults and not intended for adults.

I do think we need to hold a program for adults about publishing, especially based on the interest people have shown.

I'm curious to see what happens on Monday and if this person shows up.

Tags: libraries, programming, Summer Reading

Summer Reading Programming #3

Sorry to post these so fast on top of each other, but I'm a little behind in getting this stuff online. I had a career speaker in to talk to the teens about publishing. I was originally going to have two editors come in and talk together about publishing and have an author come in to do a reading another week. I started my Summer Reading planning so late that I was not able to get an author in (although I have many promises from people to help out at future dates...) so I asked the editors to come in on different days.

This is the first editor, Jim Minz from Del Rey, who came in to talk. Unfortunately for Juliet Ulman--the next speaker--Jim covered a wide variety of things publishing. But, Juliet is very resourceful and I'm sure she'll have something to talk about when she comes in.

Here are some photos of Jim talking:







The numbers of teens showing up at my events is slowly dropping. I don't know if it's due to the fact that the teens have other committments or that my events are no fun. :)

I know that some of my teen patrons are doing different sports camps, or like this last week, several of them share a birthday and they opted to do something other than come into the library.

I don't have a post for Programming #4 as there were only three teens and I took no pictures. Next week is my second editor, and then I have Fear Factor in the Library and the wrap-up pizza party.

Tags: libraries

Summer Reading Programming #2

We made Gocks (Goth Sock Puppets) except for me. I made a Pock (Punk Sock Puppet) since there were no Goths when I went to High School, I had to go with what I knew.

Here's some photos:













It was pretty fun, but it was quick. I wish I had known that the craft was only going to take about 40 minutes; I would have planned something else. As it was, I just had the teens make more Gocks. They really liked the concept, so they had fun making them.

Tags: libraries, gocks

Summer Reading Programming #1

Monday, July 10, 2006



We made monster pillows. I was a little nervous going in to the event. I had never run a YA program before. I had never run a craft before. Heck, I'd never made this craft before in my life (yes, I'm sure you're surprised to learn that I am not into crafts).

I bought material that I thought would be sufficient for 15 people. Why 15? That seemed like the most I would get at a craft event. I've been running Summer Reading by the seat of my pants for weeks now; just finishing stuff the moment it's needed, changing plans mid-stream, you know, all sorts of a mess. So, there was not a lot of time to advertise for this program, and I had a conflict and needed to move it to another room (we really only have one room for programming right now, anyway).

So, I scrambled around all day getting ready for the craft, not sure what I was going to do and how it would turn out. We used to have a middle school across the street from the library (they built a new high school and the middle schoolers moved into the old high school) so we had a lot of young YA people in the library every day. We don't now. The books circulate a lot, so I know that we have people coming in, but I don't sit near the YA section so I don't see who's coming in.

Seven o'clock arrived and I was sitting along with all my crafts. In some part of my mind I felt like no one was going to show up. I prepared for 15 at most, but realistically I felt like it would be zero.

Then about five minutes after seven, ten teenage girls walked in and we got started. I didn't introduce myself, I didn't ask for volunteers, I didn't mention that I want to start a Teen Advisory Group, nothing. I just started the craft and off we went.

The young ladies had a lot of fun. Several of them made two pillows. They asked about upcoming programming, and we even rescheduled an event due to the teens availability. (I figured it wouldn't hurt to cater to the people who were actually going to be showing up)

I had fun, too. I'm looking forward to our remaining crafts and non-craft programs. I don't expect to have a big turn-out (at least not until the pizza party at the end of the summer) but as long as anyone shows up, it'll be good.

DISCLAIMER:
I figured I needed to add some more to this blog to talk about what I've been doing. Lots of information on here about what I think about what others are saying, but I need more here about what I'm doing and what I think about that. I don't have a library background, so things that may seem obvious to some of you, are not clear to me.

And often I'll try something without the mindset of 'that'll never work here, we've tried it before' and it works. Or it doesn't. I don't mind. You learn from mistakes. And you can't (particularly when working with YA, since you always have new faces) just try something once, you need to try it again and again. Just because it didn't work with the current group of kids doesn't mean it won't work with next year's kids.

Tags: libraries

Ranganathan in the Hiz-ouse

Like Jessamyn, I am a huge Ranganathan fan. I've bemoaned the fact again and again that his books are not in print. I read his Five Laws of Library Science for fun my last semester of my MLIS. I found it endlessly fascinating and educational. For a book that is nearly 70 years old, it still has a lot of information in it that is useful today.

So, it was with unprecedented excitement that I read that open source versions of his work are being created by The Digital Library of Information Science & Technology Classics Project. And here's chapter one! How cool!

And, as promised many months ago, here is a version of the list I made for myself for my library, using the Five Laws as its backbone.

To explain the document a little bit, it obviously shows some very simple things that I needed to do--such as getting business cards and getting a shelf for my desk--but also has many things that are more forward thinking--such as allowing patrons to tag the catalog and starting an anime club in the library and creating a library PayPal mobile account so patrons can pay fines with their phones. When I finish an item, I change the font to strikethrough so that I can see what I've accomplished (and revisit things if they aren't working out) but still know what I don't have to focus on.

I'd love comments on my crazy list if people have them.

Tags: libraries, Ranganathan

Hotmail

I thought it was just me, but apparently there are lots of librarians who encounter trouble with Hotmail attachments. At my library, I cannot download/open anything attached to a Hotmail e-mail. I have a dickens of a time explaining this to the poor patrons who are trying to open resumes, school papers, photos, etc.

Anyone have any solutions or experience with this? I've encountered this at other libraries as well. None of the other e-mail problems--AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.--seem to have this problem.

Tags: libraries, Hotmail

Boxes and boxes and boxes of books

Every time I move, I assess my belongings and whether I need them or not. This time, we're moving from an apartment with a lot of storage (it had a full basement) to a place with no storage. We're really going through things with strict guidelines. Any hesitation, and it's gone.

However, I find that I have dozens of boxes of books. Everything from all the science fiction I read to cookbooks to the set of books from my Grandmother when she taught in a one-room schoolhouse. Parting with books is difficult. I can't get rid of a box wholesale; it needs to be sorted and examined. It's a slow process and I normally end up keeping everything.

Recently, the talented Carleen at Library Shrine had a post on whether librarians should own books. There was an article written years ago that posited that librarians should not own books:

[T]he author believed that librarians, quite frankly, shouldn't own books and if they did own books then they should donate them to the library right away. His thinking, as I understood it then, was that the only way for a librarian to truly support and promote their institution was to use the library for all of their reading material and information needs. I finished the article with rather mixed feelings. On the one hand I knew he had a point, that librarians should do all they can to support their instutions but I just wasn't entirely sure whether I was prepared to sacrifice my own personal collection in order to do that.

An interesting idea, but I don't like it. I love books. There are books I've published, that are signed to me by the authors, that mean things to me personally that I would never give up. Also, this is not a good argument. You could use it for any profession: chefs should not have food, cab drivers should not own personal cars, etc.

It just doesn't make sense. Am I really not promoting my profession if I own my own books? What about the chef that eats at someone else's restaurant or the cab driver who also drives his own car? Are they being detrimental to their profession?

It's true that I don't buy the volume of books that I did before I joined the profession (and certainly not NEARLY as many as when I worked in publishing); now I just check things out of the library. I'm able to read a wider variety of material than I ever did just using my pocket book.

For Carleen, she's preparing for a new baby, and wonders:

As far as I'm concerned, there's no better gift for a baby than a book but as I place each book on my registery I can't help but feel a little guilty that I'm potentially asking many of my librarian friends to purchase books that we have at our library that I can check out for free and without the penalty of fines, no less (perk of being a staff member).

Like me, Carleen is going through her books and deciding if it makes sense to have so many:

In addition, I'm currently trying to clean out our overflowing bookshelves in order to make more space for babythings and I'm at my wits end trying to locate another spot in the house to put them. The practical and right thing to do would be to donate them to the library, of course, but I'm having a lot of difficulty parting with any of them.

It's tough. My wife is a High School English teacher, and she loves books, too. Our daughter has a nearly full adult-sized bookshelf of books (she's three months old) in her room. How crazy is that? However, I feel that as a librarian, it behooves me to read, and even to own books so that I know more about what's being published and what my patrons might be interested in. Who else is going to promote librarianship and libraries better than a librarian who knows a lot about books and can speak to his love of books through his own collection at home? Carleen puts this more eloquently (and therefore gets the parting shot):

Books are great conversations starters...they connect people. A visitor catches eye of Me Talk Pretty One Day and immediately know a little more about my sense of humor. They see all my books on art or Chinese religion, Scandinavian history, whatever, and realize that I did actually do or study something else before going to library school.

Tags: libraries

Update RE: Moving

Well, we moved. Mostly. All the big stuff has made it to our new home. Most of the little stuff. Except stupid things like shoes. And dish detergent. And our plants. And I'm sure something we'll need tonight.

Phones are coming soon.

The internet, coming by the 21st. Yikes! No home internet service for another ten days almost. Hopefully I can make it that long! Hopefully we have the house set up by then so that I can get to a computer.

I should take photos of the boxes in our living room. If it wasn't so annoying it would probably be stunning.

Thanks to Minz, Craig E., Bill Shunn, Laura Chavoen, Sondi, and Hanley who was out on the East Coast from MT to visit Minz on vacation. What a way to spend your vacation...lugging boxes of some guy you don't know.

At least the kitchen is half unpacked so we can eat....

Tags: libraries

Sorry for the silence

And it's likely to continue. I'll be moving over the weekend to a place that has two bedrooms (one for me and my wife, one for the baby, everyone's happy) and I don't know when I'll get Internet service set up again.

I'll be able to check stuff some from work, but that's limited. No posting to speak of unless I get super inspired by some topic.

Tags: libraries

Reference Interview vs. Poor Website Design

So Friday afternoon I get a call from a woman looking for the phone number for "any Lion's Club in Somerset County." She tells me she's in a hurry. I decide to go to the Lion's Club website (surely a national organization has a website where you can search for Lion's Club clubs?). I chose English as my language and click on the link to find clubs.

I first have to agree that I'm not going to misuse any information I find on the website. This is quite laughable; it wouldn't take much to get past this point and find and misuse their information if I was someone prone to be that way, but I'm not. I click on 'accept' and head straight into my search.

I can narrow it down by state, but then I run into problems. There's no furhter narrowing. You then click on the letter of the alphabet which starts the name of the club. Most clubs are named after the city they're in, but still, I should be able to narrow it down by county at least. (it would have helped me some in this case)

I click on 'S' for Somerset, the town and county I am in. There is no club for Somerset. I'll be honest, I freeze. I become reference deer in the headlights. There are a lot of cities in Somerset County, and I don't know where to go next. (my mistake is not clicking on 'F' for Franklin Township, which is an alternate name to where I am, more about this later) I tell the woman I cannot narrow my results by county and start to explain what the website is showing me.

She reminds me that she is in a hurry (and her tone of voice adds 'I can't believe you are stupid enough to not remember that'). I state that I remember her being in a hurry and that I'm searching as quickly as I can. An aside: this is a reference desk, I am alone, there are patrons who come into the library that need my help, I don't have time to sit and have a conversation on the phone. I then again try to start explaining to her what I'm seeing and what I'll have to do to search for clubs in Somerset County. I want to ask her if there are particular cities she wants me to look for when she says 'I'm not asking for your opinion, I want information.'

Reference interviews can be frustrating even with a helpful, pleasant person. But when the person is nasty, they are unbearable. I say that I can't use the Lion's Club website to look up clubs by county. She tells me she doesn't believe me. If I wasn't annoyed before (and I was) I am now. I decide to switch tactics, very aware that she is in a hurry.

I go to a resource called Reference USA, which gives business and personal addresses and phone numbers, etc. I search for Lion's Club in NJ hoping that I can scan their list quickly to find a city in Somerset County, give her that phone #, and send her on her way.

I get back nine results for the entire state.

What I didn't know/didn't think about, is that many Lion's Club clubs do not have permanent addresses where they would have a phone number. They meet in restuarants and other places. I tell her the closest club that I have a phone number for is Woodbridge. (you can go to google maps to see distance from Somerset to Woodbridge if you want)

She tells me--for the second time--that she doesn't believe me.

I don't know why I would want to lie to her, it's not like I was enjoying the phone call. She was not in a good mood when she called, and I'm making it worse; not intentionally mind you, but I might as well be.

I hesitate. Reference deer in headlights again. I want to explain to her what I've done, what I'm looking at, but she already has shown that she does not explanations from me. I fire up SuperPages (Verizon's online phone book) and look for Lion's Club that way. Same results as Reference USA.

I tell that every way I search, the closest club I have is in Woodbridge. (this is not technically true, the closest club with a phone number is in Woodbridge, most later) She is--I suspect--actually angry at this point. She then says 'forget it, give the phone number for a woman's non-profit orgranization like the Lion's Club that is in Somerset County.'

This is worse than reference deer. This is reference overload. This question/request is so huge and vague that I blurt out that I don't even know where to begin. I think she thinks I'm saying something along the lines of I don't even know where to begin to tell you how stupid that request is, but I literally mean that I'm not sure--for someone in a hurry, this is twenty minutes into our call--how to start this search.

She questions whether she has the library, whether she has the reference librarian, she wonders what I know at all, etc. etc. She wants to talk to my supervisor. I'm more than happy to do that, except my supervisor is out until Tuesday. She is not happy to hear that. She can't believe that we're closed on Sunday and Monday. She is mad. She tells me to give her the Woodbridge phone number and hangs up.

After we're off the phone, and I'm staring at the page in the phone book that lists non-profits in Somerset County (and by name, I don't know that I'd know which ones are women's non-profits like the Lion's Club). There is no Lion's Club in the list. I decide to click on 'F' on the Lion's Club website, and see that there is a Lion's Club in Franklin Township. However, it has no phone number. It meets at the restaurant that is next door to the library.

I think back to the agreement I made not to misuse their information and I can't think of a way I could misuse this information. The worst I could do would be to show up for a meeting and buy everyone a drink. There is a contact name, but had I gotten this far with my reference interviewee, would I be expected to find the person's personal phone number and give that out?

While the reference interview was handled poorly by me (becuase really, the whole impetus of making the reference interview work is on the librarian), there is no excuse for the eggregious website design by the Lion's Club. There should be other ways to search for clubs than to click on the letter that starts the name of the club. What if I was moving to a new area and didn't know the names of the towns around to search that way? Would it be possible to get a list by county? How about a list derived from X city and everything within Y miles of it?

Both of those things would be easy to do. It might not have saved my reference interview, but it wouldn't have made it any worse.

Tags: libraries, websites, bad design

Collection Development & Purchase Requests

From one of my new favorite blogs Super Patron (how awesome is it that a patron is blogging about libraries from their point of view? this is one of the most important blogs about libraries to be created...ever), a quick post about libraries ordering books from patron requests:

'At FCL - if there's a new book a patron wants - we'll order it. That's how some of our collection development is done.' [this quote is from Kevin Yezbick, a student near where the Super Patron lives, and was quoted in the Super Patron post]

Now, that's not too spectacular. I suspect almost every library buys books that patrons ask about that aren't in the catalog. The patrons are always surprised that we would buy books (at least at our library) based on their requests, but are pleased that we do so. To be honest, even with the wide variety of interests that the staff has, there are LOTS of books we miss and I'm glad that the patrons can bring them to our attention. Here's the real deal of what the Super Patron's post was about [still from Kevin]:

'My friend was dreaming of a tool that would enable patrons to purchase books for the library that they wanted the library to have--and be put on the hold list for that item automatically. Now--books are already purchased by the patrons through the library funds--but she wanted to see how patrons could purchase books specifically that they wanted...over and above taxes and whatnot.'

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I know that the Princeton Public Library uses an Amazon wish list to maintain a list of books that the library would like to add to its collection. It wouldn't be difficult to also have these books put on hold for the person who buys them.

However, to me it would seem that having the library place purchase requests is still the easiest way to do this. At our library, a hold is placed for the book for the person who made the purchase request. That way, when the book comes in, it gets set aside for them.

Mayeb it's just me, but having the patron buy the book in the first place (why wouldn't they just keep the book?) seems counter-productive. Of course, it could be that the library has a small collection development budget, or the patron is looking to create some sort of tax write-off (although you'd need to buy a lot of books to make that worthwhile!) and in that case, the patron buying books makes sense. Unless you use some sort of service like the Amazon wish list or the purchase request system(where the books are bought and sent directly to the library without the patron handling them) there's no point in putting the book on hold for the patron. Obviously if the patron physically bought the book, he/she already has the book in his/her possession and it would be silly to give it to the library and then expect it to be placed on hold.

My question is, why didn't I learn about these types of things in my collection development class in college? How come we didn't have some sort of a project where we developed a way to organize collection development? I.e. do you write all your purchases down on note cards, or in a spreadsheet, or in a notebooks? How do you keep track of purchase request books? Of replacement books? Your library may or may not have policies (it probably doesn't) and every librarian likely does something different. I think it would be very cool to have a project for class wherein you develop a strategy for keeping track of your collection development. You could try to develop a contact at Baker & Taylor to get test/student accounts to place orders for books and then track them. Just something I've been thinking about. Maybe I should adjunct. :)

This isn't to say that I didn't learn anything in my collection development class. We talked a lot about how to determine what should go in your collection based on your community's needs. That's important, but it's also important to get some practical advice/experience (even in a school oriented assignment) on how you actually do collection development: do you submit your purchases to one librarian who does ALL the buying, do you do your own buying, do you have to get purchases approved, etc. You could set up different scenarios for the students and have them come up with ways that they would work in those situations. Again, just me thinking out loud.

Tags: libraries, collection development, patrons

FAQ updated

I've updated my FAQ to reflect some of my experiences in searching for a job.

Thanks Andrea!

Tags: libraries

Creating Passionate Users

This is something that libraries do well. When a librarian connects with a patron, that patron becomes a passioniate user of the library who will always, always, always come to the library for information, pleasure, fun, curiosity, etc.

But how do you make that connection? Part of it is just being a good person to everyone who comes through the door. Your patrons are paying--either directly or indirectly--for you to be there. How would you want to be treated if you came through the door? Well, do that to each person who comes in. Even if they're teenagers (why alienate people just about to become tax-paying adults? that makes no sense to me), even if they're a different socio-economic group from you, even if they're homeless, even if you can't understand what they're saying, welcome them all and treat them like people.

OK, you've done the tough part. Now comes the difficult part. A great place to get ideas is the Creating Passionate Users blog will give you many. At one point, I had more than 20 entries from this blog that I wanted to make reference to. In the end, I decided that I should just link to it and tell people to go there. Most of the time, Kathy Sierra is the person who posts the most on the site, although there are technically others who post (I've never seen anyone else).

Kathy mostly posts from a software development side of things, but I think you can take her ideas and relate them to any professional area. Since software development has an end product that wants to insinuate itself into people's lives, whether it be an iPod or Google or whatever. The library should follow some of the same pains to market itself and make itself useful to the patron. She has posts like what if you were watching a movie and the Microsoft paperclip came up to help you watch the movie? You would stop watching the movie because the experience of watching the movie has actually gotten in the way of watching the movie. So, if the experience of searching your catalog gets in the way of the patron searching the catalog (the user needs to put the word 'AND' between words for example [hello Ebsco! get with the 1990s!]), why should the patron come to the library to look for books when Amazon does a better job of helping them find their book (other than the patron doesn't need to buy EVERY book they have mild interest in)?

I can't tell you how much I love this blog. It's witty, clever, simple, informative, everything I want from a blog. Kathy draws really great diagrams to get her points across, and I know that visualization is really helpful when making points. Go to Creating Passionate Users today, you won't regret it!

Tags: libraries, Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra

John Iliff

I only just met John last month at the NJLA conference. He was exuberant, excited, and effusive about podcasting at the panel. He was so full of life. Because of this, even though I hardly knew him, I was shocked to hear that he passed away recently.

What a loss for the field. What a loss for his family. We need people with his devotion to their craft. I wish I had gotten to know him better.

Tags: libraries, John Iliff

Nebula Awards

The Nebula Award winners can be found here. Congrats to all the winners, but kudos to Kelly Link for winning two of three short fiction awards (Best Novella for "Magic for Beginners" and Best Novellette for "The Faery Handbag" [which also won the Locus Award and the Hugo Award])!

This was also the first year for the Andre Norton Award (created to honor young adult SF/F novels). The award was given to Holly Black, for her novel Valiant.

If your library doesn't have any of the Nebula Award winners, this would be a good time to get them. Kelly's book would be a great addition to any collection, not just science fiction. Her book was one of five books chosen by Time magazine as best books of 2005.

Tags: libraries, Nebula Awards, Kelly Link, Holly Black

What Do Your Teens Read?

I'm in the process of finding out what my teens read. Ahem. I should say, the teen patrons at my library; they are not my teens. They are their own teens. If I remember nothing else that my parents tried to teach me, remembering that I am an individual is worth all the money in the world.

Talented YA author Justine Larbalestier (also all-around cool person and someone I'm glad to count as an acquaintance/friend) blogged about an article that irritated her today. The article claims:

[M]ost of the stuff published for children and adolescents is abysmal, self-regarding trash. Part of the fault rests with the packagers such as Alloy and in the way they do business. A larger part of the problem stems from publishers’ misguided belief that kids want to read about people just like themselves, living lives just like their lives.

Cassandra Clare fires back:

The publishing industry has always been a profit operation, that's why it's an industry and not a charity. Publishers publish books they think people want to buy and read, full stop.

There's also an excellent response here that mentions how some of canonical works of American literature started as books written for young people. Books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Justine adds her own fiery bit:

Lots of teenagers want to read about people like them, lots don't, and some of them want to be transported as well as read about teenagers like them. It's not an either/or. Very few things are. Some of those transporting books also happen to be about teenagers like them.

There is a lot of YA literature out there that is just amazing. Transporting (and not necessaryily in the 'let's all get aboard the space ship' type way) you to a whole new plane of thinking. Many of us thought the way John Green's teens talk/think in Looking for Alaska, but when you read the book, you are moved. I'm not sure if it's a newer arena of publishing or something I missed when I was a teen and had my nose shoved into Stephen King books. Were there books like The Giver or Speak or Peeps when I was a teen in the 1980s? One of the reasons those Stephen King books drew me in was that Mr. King used teenage protagonists in a whole lot of his stories. This wasn't an accident.

Like I said, I'm still learning what my teen patrons are reading. They read a lot of manga, of which I know very little. They read the sef-referential dreck books A LOT. Like I said above, I liked reading books in high school that featured characters I could relate to. I also liked reading books that had things happening in them that just couldn't happen in reality.

What are your teen patrons reading?

Tags: libraries, young adult, John Green, Justine Larbalestier, Laurie Halse Anderson, Scott Westerfeld, Lois Lowry

Just Because it's Not New to You

I went to a panel at the NJLA conference that was hosted by Nancy Pearl. Yes, the Book Lust Nancy Pearl. Yes, action figure model Nancy Pearl. The panel was called Book Crush, which is the title of Nancy's next book. Written in the style of the Book Lust books, this book will focus on books for teens and younger. She said something during the panel that I've often thought over the years. It was:

"Any book that someone hasn't read is new to them."

This is very true. It's why books for children and young adults stay in print for a long time. If it's well written or if the kids just like them (I can think of a few books I loved while in grade school that I think are absolute dreck these days), the publishers will keep them in print.

I thought of Nancy's comment again when going through some older posts over at Pop Goes the Library. The post in question was wondering aloud about the latest King Kong movie and its subsequent DVD release, and that many libraries would be carrying this new DVD since that's what the patrons were looking for. Did that mean that the 1933 and 1976 versions of the movie should be weeded from the collection? PGTL says:

[I]magine how the various versions of King Kong, from 1933, 1976, and 2005 reflect the time when they were made. I mean, wouldn't it be interesting to have a women's study class watch these three versions, and see if our perspectives on women have changed with time? And you could only come to the library to get all three versions of the films, more likely than not.

While some libraries question whether DVDs belong in the library, I have no question in my mind whether they should. They are something the patrons are looking for. We are here to serve the needs of the patrons. I know that often a library carries titles (whether in print or in video) that you cannot buy/rent from a new chain store. As PGTL pointed out in the quote above, the library would be the place to get everything in one stop.

Remember Ranganathan, rules 2, 3, and 5:

2. Every reader his or her book (you could rephrase it: Every person his or her information need.

3. Every book its reader (rephrased: Every information need its person)

5. The library is a growing organism

That last one I'm going to shove down people's throats. It's my repsonse to "We've always done it this way." What if when you wanted microfilm someone said no? Or when you wanted to subscribe to EBSCO, or to HeritageQuest?

We should not be in the business of maintaining the status quo. We need to be ahead of the curve and anticipate the needs of the patrons. If they want DVDs, look we have them already. They want downloadable PSP files? We have them already. They want video games? We have them. They want coffee? We can have that, too.

No it's not what libraries have traditionally done, but when did the profession become to be all about traditionalism and staying the course.

I thought we were radicals.