Collection Developments @ Sno-Isle

Jane over at Dear Author takes a look at some cover trends over the last year in the romance genre and what appeals.  the Smart Bitches have dedicated a couple of posts to a pair of legs that are making the rounds.

The Guardian is having a James Bond love fest - test your knowledge.

apparently, Doris Lessing has had it up to here with the photogs and wishes she’d never won the Nobel Prize for literature, calling it a “bloody disaster.”

Michael Rogers of the LJ In The Bookroom blog, has a nice article detailing the new titles coming out surrounding the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Rogers mentions them only peripherally, but does anyone else remember the Indy pulp paperbacks that were out in the early ’90s besides me?

not surprisingly, James Frey has avoided the media since the Oprah lambasting.  a new interview in Vanity Fair profiles the author who has a fiction debut (this term used loosely) this month, Bright Shiny Morning.

Building on the success of the Camano Island Library which opened last June, the Clinton Library opened today in its new configuration as a popular materials library. Like our Camano Island branch, the Clinton library offers patrons a browsing collection that focuses on popular new titles (including an Explore collection) subjects of perennial interest to patrons and formats that are in demand at all of our libraries.

Library services will be slightly different as well.

How does Clinton differ from other Sno-Isle libraries?

• The Clinton collection will appear in the catalog but will not pickup holds.
• Clinton will not be on router and the collection will not be shared. This practice will help ensure that the browsing collection at Clinton is kept intact. (All copies of high demand titles will be in addition to the number of copies the system purchases to meet our holds to copy ratio.)
• Clinton Library materials will have the same loan periods as those in other libraries, including short loan periods for POP materials, but Clinton materials will not renew. Clinton materials check out once, with no renewal. POP materials will have a POP location (that is, short loan). All other items, except for a few reference books will have a location of BROWSE. Clinton and Camano are the only libraries using the BROWSE location.
• Staff in other branches should not refer their patrons to Clinton to pick up popular materials that show a shelf status because these materials may not be on the shelf. Also, staff should not call Clinton and ask staff to check the shelves for titles their patrons want.
• Staff in other branches should not check out Clinton materials that are returned to a branch other than Clinton. After returning a Clinton item place it in a delivery box for Clinton. The Clinton Library is on the Island delivery route.

New shelving purchased for the library enable staff to display the collection in much the same way as a bookstore. Materials at the Clinton Library are available in multiple copies and are being shelved face-out. Clinton retains a small children’s collection similar to other Sno-Isle libraries however these materials have a BROWSE location and are not shared.

If you have questions, please contact Barbara Hart, Nancy Messenger or Becky Bolte.

Here are some photos of the new Clinton Library collection.

Gardening books are prominently featured at Clinton.

New Adult Fiction and Non Fiction display

New furniture offers patrons a comfortable place to sit while browsing.

Midwest Tapes the vendor we use for DVDs and CDs recently entered the audiobook market repackaging the consumer editions of the audiobooks we had been purchasing direct from the publisher. The repackaged consumer editions (same readers) enable us to purchase significantly more copies of titles as well as choose a wider variety of titles since the cost savings is significant over library editions from the audiobook publisher. Library editions can often cost upwards of $120 per copy, while the average price of a Midwest Tapes consumer edition is $39.00.

These consumer editions will not include original cover art, but rather will be color coded by material type (fiction green, non fiction blue, Spanish red, children’s gold). Given the popularity of this format Collection Development staff feel that the greater purchasing power represented by the repackaged consumer editions serves our customers better than library editions. Consumer editions from Midwest Tapes should begin appearing on your shelves soon.

If you have questions about this change please contact Jim McCluskey, Marin Younker (adult talking book selector) or Lorraine Burdick (teen/children’s audio book selector).

Winners of the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America and announced last night, are:

• Best Novel: Down River by John Hart (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
• Best First Novel by an American Author: In the Woods by Tana French (Viking)
• Best Paperback Original: Queenpin by Megan Abbott (S&S)
• Best Fact Crime: Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi (Norton)
• Best Critical/Biographical: Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (Penguin Press)
• Best Short Story: “The Golden Gopher” in Los Angeles Noir by Susan Straight (Akashic Books)
• Best Juvenile: The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh (Hyperion Books for Young Readers)
• Best Young Adult: Rat Life by Tedd Arnold (Dial Books for Young Readers/Penguin)
• Best Play: Panic by Joseph Goodrich (International Mystery Writers’ Festival)
• Best TV Episode Teleplay: “Pilot” for Burn Notice, teleplay by Matt Nix (USA Network/Fox Television Studios)
• Best Motion Picture Screenplay: Michael Clayton, screenplay by Tony Gilroy (Warner Bros. Pictures)
• Robert L. Fish Memorial Award: “The Catch,” in Still Waters by Mark Ammons (Level Best Books)

Occasionally, Sno-Isle purchases used copies of titles to fill hold queues or requests.  The decision to purchase used copies is based on the popularity of the material, the cost of the used item, the quantity of used copies available, the reliability of the dealer, and most importantly whether the item meets the selection criteria for Sno-Isle libraries.

The novels of Dick Francis are a good example of why Sno-Isle purchases used materials.  Dick Francis remains a popular author yet many of his titles are no longer available for purchase in hardcover.  When Acquisitions purchases used copies of a title, they are visually inspected before being added to the collection.  Since these titles are used, the condition isn’t typical of the quality that patrons expect of Sno-Isle library materials.  To distinguish these titles Materials Processing will soon begin adding a label inside the dust jacket of the book.

Contact Jim McCluskey if you have questions about these labels.

The Washington Post reported that the Renaissance Learning report, What Kids are Reading, “calculated the books most read by more than 3 million school children last year. The complete list is in the Postarticle, but the number one one titles by category include:

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss (First grade)

If You Give a Mouse a Cookieby Laura Numeroff (Second grade)

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White (Third grade)

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blue (Fourth grade)

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (Fifth grade)

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen (Sixth grade)

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (Seventh and Eight grades)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Ninth through Twelfth grades)

Sno-Isle owns all of the titles on the complete list.