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August 24, 2006

Weeding Pluto

And just like that your entire 523 section goes out of date. Earlier this week, we finally decided that the New York books that didn't mention September 11th were officially Too Old. How long will it take before Pluto is no longer a planet in our collections? I'm sure not pulling them today, when I have nothing to replace it, but I think I'll keep an eye out to see how fast they come out with new planet books.

This is probably a disappointing blow to series nonfiction publishers--they would have much preferred to lengthen their series to 12, not cut it to 8!

Posted by susan at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2006

They're older than you think!

Like many children's librarians, I've been spending August weeding my collections. And as so often has been the case, I am scandalized to find some of the books I've left in the collection for way too long.

First, I finished weeding the VHS feature film collection, where the main concern was whether the item was earning its place on the shiny new shelving, so circulation was the main thing to look at. There were some painful moments (farewell again, Mister Rogers) but overall, it was pretty easy. Next up, the 600s--last summer I did the invention/health/machines. This year I am picking up with the cars and working my way through space travel, pets, cooking, and building. The space books were, shall we say, a blast from the past.

In the 629s, I was having a great time pulling out old, battered books that were clearly out of date. Less happy was the feeling as I learned to pick up on some important cues that forced me to start examining the quite new-looking books more carefully. A lot of them turned out to be older than I thought! A first hint, as I pulled a nice crisp book off the shelf, was when I noticed that although we are now using barcode numbers in the 9 million range, some of the books had numbers like 655,971. Uh-oh! A second cue might be, hmmm, didn't that author die years and years ago? Or, Gosh, when DID that publisher go out of business?

I realized that the main pitfall for me is that I am a barcode in the 655,000 range instead of the 9 million range. I look at a date like 1993 and I think that seems very recent, though in fact for many of our patrons it was literally a lifetime ago. Or I might look at a book and think, Oh, yes, I remember buying that so it CAN'T be too old....though I bought it back at the Chicago Public Library 20 years ago. I have been made properly aware of my age this week.

But on the bright side, the 600s are looking great!

Posted by susan at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)

August 6, 2006

Only 4,000 published in a year

Since there are only @4,000 children's books published each year, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a list of my favorite books of the year...should it? Ever since beginning as a children's book reviewer in 1994, I've had the chance to vote for what I think are the best books of the year. But that was always working from a set list--books that had gotten starred reviews in the particular journal, say. It was still a ton of reading, but other people were voting too, and it never seemed too overwhelming.

This year is going to be different. For the first time, I'll be publishing (in the International Reading Association's newsletter Reading Today) my own list, side by side with their other reviewer's list. It's hard to even know where to start! Well, actually it's easy to know where to start--The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is where I'll start. It's knowing how to tackle the remaining 3,999+ books that's daunting.

Do they still teach speed-reading?

Posted by susan at 4:15 PM | Comments (0)