New Biography Selection Criteria

My library's ever-shrinking book budget has made me be more discerning when it comes to selection. However, one area that is always difficult for me is biographies.

It seems like every troubled athlete, aging celebrity, recovering musician, reality television personality, unfaithful politician (and their wives), have all signed book deals. I don't pay much attention to pop culture personalities, so it's hard for me to tell if the person is someone significant.

So I was joking with a coworker about a new selection criteria for all of these celebrity memoirs. Since the importance of many of these people is based on social zeitgeist, I thought I could use Google to help me decide. I figure that if a person is important, a Google search for that person's name should return at least one million webpages. If they're above that (arbitrary) threshold, I'll buy their biography - if not, then I'll check again when the paperback comes out.

Granted, not all my ideas are practical, but here's how some current biographies fare with this "hive mind" selection criteria:

• The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, by David Remnick (51,900,000 for "Barack Obama")
• Oprah: A Biography, by Kitty Kelley (21,900,000 for "Oprah")
• Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin, by Hampton Sides (12,300,000 for "Martin Luther King")
• Bowie: A Biography, by Marc Spitz (10,400,000 for "David Bowie")
• Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, by Chelsea Handler (3,450,000 for "Chelsea Handler")
• The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee, by Sarah Silverman (2,810,000 for "Sarah Silverman")
• Staying True, by Jenny Sanford (2,280,000 for "Jenny Sanford")
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned, by Michael J. Fox (1,430,000 for "Michael J. Fox")
• Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, by Raquel Welch (1,250,000 for "Raquel Welch")

• This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection, by Carol Burnett (868,000 for "Carol Burnett")
• A Game of Character: A Family Journey from Chicago's Southside to the Ivy League and Beyond by Craig Robinson (504,000 for "Craig Robinson")
• When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man by Jerry Weintraub and Rich Cohen, (373,000 for "Jerry Weintraub")
• I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced, by Nujood Ali (268,000 for "Nujood Ali")
• The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century, by Alan Brinkley (193,000 for "Henry Luce")
• Killing Willis: From Diff'rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted, by Todd Bridges and Sarah Tomlinson (141,000 for "Todd Bridges")
• Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds, by Robin Olds, Christina Olds, and Ed Rasimus (122,000 for "Robin Olds")

Obviously, not flawless, but this Google criteria might help tell me who I should pay attention to. And in addition to traditional reviews and ratings, another one of my tactics is to wait until requests for a book reach a certain number before ordering it, but that method only addresses demand after the fact, and leaves out the patrons who didn't think to request it.

Selection is a fine art, but when it comes to biographies, most my crayons are dull.

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Reference Question of the Week – 8/3/08

[Note: I'm starting to feel bad that most of the "reference question of the week" questions lately have just been humorous or interesting, but not challenging or requiring strategy or unique reference resources. I'll try to do better in the future.]

A patron walks up to the desk with "Memories coming from a Tennis Star by Alfred A. Knopf" written on a piece of paper. She hands it to me and says, "I read about this book in the paper, about Andre Agassi - can you request if for me?"

That's pretty straightforward, but it didn't show up in our consortium catalog. It didn't show up in the state-wide catalog. And I couldn't find it in either WorldCat or Amazon. Hmm.

Each time I didn't find the title, the patron insisted she read about it in the paper. Patrons are notorious for being simultaneously confident and inaccurate, so I asked her which paper she reads, in the hopes of tracking down the article and learning more about the book.

She couldn't remember where she read it, so I just searched the internet for "memories coming from tennis star agassi." The first result linked to a new story entitled Memoirs coming from tennis star Agassi, from USA Today, and the patron said "yes, that's what I read."

When we clicked into read the story, though, we found that she had slightly misread the article. It said that publisher Alfred A. Knopf had acquired the rights to publish Agassi's memoirs (not memories), and that "his book is not yet titled and no release date has been set."

The patron was a little embarrassed, but recovered by asking:

Well, can request it for me anyway?

When I said that no, I couldn't request it until it's been published and we have a record in our system, she got upset and left.

Which made me feel bad, because there are other books about Andre Agassi out there. But hopefully she'll read again in the paper when the book is published, and come back to request it then. I'm definitely buying this whenever it comes out.

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