Random Book Rantings [DECKLE EDGE]

A few odds and ends for my annual "I'll be in Ohio for a week" post:

Books with Deckle Edges
Over the last five or six months, it seems Amazon has gone crazy marking books [DECKLE EDGE]. I actually like that type of pages, but it would in no way influence my purchase decision - so does that bit of information really deserve such prominent billing?

It's kind of like how my library includes "Pb" (for paperback) at the end of some of our call numbers, i.e. 822.33/Haml/Pb. In theory it's suppose to help locate the book, because it tells you to look for a paperback, but it usually only confuses patrons because we don't put the "Pb" part on the call tag.

So, my question is the same: is that information actually necessary?

News Stories About Long-Overdue Books
There seems to have been a spate of stories recently (and this year in general) about long-overdue library books finally being returned. I wonder if there really has been an increase in this occurrence If so, why? And why does the public care? I guess it's a little interesting what someone checked out 99 years ago, and that it survived this long, and that the quaint little library fine would have been x-hundred dollars, but the library has graciously waived it.

I wonder what would happen if this happened in my library - I think, nothing. Sure, we'd talk about it, but probably just give it a barcode and put it back on the shelf - or to the book sale. I don't think we'd call the newspaper. Besides, my library doesn't charge overdue fines, so ours would lack the gracious ending.

And with all the attention these people get, do you think anyone right now is deliberately deciding not return a book so they can get their fifteen minutes 50 years from now? It occurred to me that the only reason people know these books were checked out 99 years ago is because the checkout date is stamped in the book. 99 years from now, there will be no more of these human interest stories, because ILS systems don't last that long, and when you switch from one to the other, chances are you lose a lot of historical data like this. Makes you realize that older technologies are actually better at data retention.

Do Nothing But Read Day
I read on LISNews about Do Nothing But Read Day - and happily noted that it (Sunday, Dec. 20th) was the same day I would be on a 17 hour train trip from Boston to Ohio. It doesn't sound like I meet all the requirements, but I'm going to participate in spirit anyway (and tag them on LibraryThing).

I've never taken a cross-country train trip before, and I'm kind of looking forward to it. It's even got a cool name: the Lake Shore Limited. Amtrak offers free wireless, but my emphasis will be on books: printed books, audio books and video books (a.k.a. movies).

I hope you enjoy your holiday season, and I'll be back in a week or so.

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Reference Question of the Week – 11/29/09

A little elderly woman walked up to the desk. She handed me a call number written on a piece of paper and said,

I need a librarian's assistance in getting this book.

This happens. Sometimes a book isn't on the shelf where it's supposed to be because it got misshelved, or a patron left it at a table, or it was recently returned and hasn't been put back on the shelf yet, or someone just took it without checking it out.

Being a librarian not only means you spend a lot of time creating organization, but you also quickly pick up skills necessary to maintain organization.

Finding missing books is almost like being a CSI - you have to reconstruct the situation, to figure out where it ended up. Does it seem like a page misshelved it, perhaps by transposing the dewey numbers? Could a patron have picked it up, forgot where they got it from, and then just slipped it back wherever was easiest? Did a staff person pull it for a book display and forget to mark it in the system? Could a child have pulled it off a low shelf, and then left it on an even lower one?

I bet every library has that one person who seems able to find any missing book. At my first library, that person taught me "The Book Search" song to find missing books:

One Shelf to the left,
One shelf to the right;
Higher shelf,
Lower shelf,
Fight fight fight!

I still sing this whenever I'm looking for a missing book, but the last line sometimes unnerves any patrons who happen to be in the stacks near me.

So anyway, I walked with this little elderly woman down to where the book should be, and I was thinking about the most likely scenario that caused this book to go missing. When we got to the right aisle, I checked the call number on the paper again to start looking, when she said,

I can see the book on the top shelf, I just can't reach it.

I'm happy she asked me for help, instead of trying to climb up on one of our step stools to get it herself. My name is Brian; I am a librarian, and I am tall.

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Options for Printing Books

It's funny how things happen in threes*:

1. A couple weeks ago, I was talking to a colleague about Google Books, and I made a comment like, "since Google is scanning all these old books, if they allow some kind of print-to-bind option, it would mean that no book would ever be out-of-print again." The idea intrigued me, so I looked around and found an article saying Google is doing exactly that.
    
2. A week or so later, a post on LibraryStuff.net talked about HP and the University of Michigan teaming up for a print-on-demand service of their library books.
    
3. And then this week, a friend of mine tweeted about free print-your-own mini books from Featherproof books.

The first two are useful and technologically interesting, but my reaction was, "I'm happy that exists somewhere in the world, but it'll probably never apply to me and my medium-size library" (except perhaps it might be a way to replace missing books from our Local History collection).

But the third one is cool in a Make/ReadyMade sort of way, and my reaction was, "hey, we could do that here." Chelmsford's Teen Librarian is participating in NaNoWriMo, and printing the kids' final books in this style would be a lot of fun. Plus, putting them on the Library's website means that their friends could print them too - and it's a much more interesting format than just 8.5x11 term-paper-looking printings.

It'd be great if there were web-based software that would do the formatting for you - just copy/paste in the text, and if flowed everything to the right page and orientation - but I'm guessing there is not. So in the meantime, I'll see what I can do with Publisher.

*Did you see 30 Rock last week? Ha.

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Night of a Thousand Boyfriends

I was sitting next to our Teen Librarian as she was deleting books she'd just weeded from the Young Adult collection. We were kind of joking about the books that didn't circulate, and also lamenting how important cover art is to teens - if the cover of the book looks dorky or dated, they will not take it out.

Among those that didn't make the cut was Night of a Thousand Boyfriends - a choose-your-own-adventure book about dating. Ha. I loved those books when I was growing up, and thought one about dating was a funny idea.

I flipped through it, curious how "far" a YA book would go, and got quite a surprise. Here are some excerpts:

• If you take the Ecstasy, turn to page 23.
• If you decline the offer, turn to page 72.

and

• If you suggest things are moving a little too fast anyway, turn to page 88.
• If you insist that Brian run to the drug store for protection, turn to page 67.
• If you throw caution to the wind and unfasten his belt, turn to page 39.

I'm sure teens have to make choices like this, but we both were amazed this made it into the YA collection.

Beyond that, this book was just bizarre - which is to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The book is about dating, so many of the paths involved going to clubs or bars, drinking, and going home with strangers. But some of the endings resulted in passing out, lesbian sex, kidnapping, internet porn, marriage, pregnancy - and being the Queen of Neptune.

So if you're looking for a book for a book club, Night of a Thousand Boyfriends by Miranda Clarke will certainly provide plenty topics of discussion.

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Edelweiss Interactive Publisher Catalogs

I don't think this is a new thing, but my Director recently showed me Edelweiss Interactive Publisher Catalogs.

It appears to be geared more towards bookstores than libraries, but Edelweiss is a free product from Above the Treeline for searching book vendors' catalogs. The goal seems to be to avoid wasting the paper of printed publisher catalogs, which I am all for. Searching can be filtered to limit to certain publishers or topics, and that is useful, but sometimes, flipping through a printed catalog is just better.

More features and explanation from their homepage:

Why edelweiss?

• Paper catalogs are out of date and inaccurate before the ink is dry.
• Reduce expenses and environmental costs by eliminating wasteful catalog printing and reaching more, and more targeted customers.
• The American Booksellers Association has endorsed edelweiss as the preferred solution for its membership.
• Search keywords, authors, excerpts, and more across all participating publishers and catalogs.
• Easily tag, filter, sort, view, and export title lists in custom formats.
• Exchange notes, comments, and suggested order quantities between peers, publisher sales reps, and retailers.

So what's the difference between searching this and searching Amazon? The filtering for one, but the last point could make collaborative ordering easier. However, we use an entirely different system at my library, and are unlikely to change.

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Where Is A Library’s Community?

Here's an interesting situation - so interesting, in fact, that I find my self in agreement with both sides of the issue.

The Concord (NH) Public Library found that it couldn't afford to purchase all the books it wanted. So, it started a program where patrons could purchase and "donate" a copy of a book from the Library's wish list.

Great idea. They explained the program on their website, set up wish lists on Amazon, and waited for the books to roll in. Good use of Web 2.0-ish technology, right? Patrons could just click and pay for the book, and it would be shipped right to the library. Kudos to the library for being creative and proactive and making it easy for the public to support the library in a very useful way.

But after four weeks, only four of the 30+ books on the wish list were purchased.

Last Thursday, the owner* of the independent Gibson's Bookstore in Concord sent out a message to his customers. He explains very well what he feels the library did wrong, and appealed to his customers to support the local library buy purchasing the books locally. He even created a duplicate click-to-purchase wish list for people to use to donate books to the library.

The result? In less than 24 hours, all of the remaining wish list books were purchased to be donated to the library (which is why the wish lists are now empty).

This benefits the library, right? And it benefits local business, which benefits the tax base and the local workers, and everyone is happy, right? So why didn't the library just do that in the first place?

I wonder: could the library have done anything differently? I think the Amazon wish list was a good idea, but it wasn't successful. I don't know what kind of promotion it got, but perhaps the library's website just doesn't get enough traffic.

Also, the idea of a library partnering with a local business is a bit of a sticky wicket**. Being a non-profit government department, libraries usually cannot do anything that would imply it favors one business over another. But I suppose it would have been okay if the library approached all the bookstores in town - which I think is limited to Gibson's and a Borders, anyway.

This then starts to make the program more complicated and difficult to manage, to make sure patrons don't purchase duplicate books. But by opening the program up to the customers of the stores, the library would have been able to reach more members of the community.

Library communities are not just the people who come through the door, and certainly not just the people who visit the website. When libraries reach out to the community, we have to go to where the community is, and not just wait for them to come to us.

UPDATE: Article and reader comments at the Concord Monitor newspaper

UPDATE 10/1/09: The Concord Library created a second wish list, and distributed it to Amazon, Gibson's and Borders (in-store lists only). That's the best way to get it filled quickly, by distributing it as widely as possible to get the message to the patrons. And then, as Michael from Gibson's says, "It's up to us to convince you to shop at Gibson's--as it always has been."

*Full disclosure: the Director of my library is married to the owner of Gibson's.

**I love that phrase.

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