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October 24, 2006

Librarians who can't count

Or, My Top Ten--Whoops, Make That Eleven--Favorite Books of 2006

My editor at Reading Today, John Micklos, gently informed me this morning that the Top Ten Favorites list that I whittled down for so long actually has eleven titles on it. How mortifying! How ridiculous! How painful to have to cut another title off that list! Farewell to Uri Shulevitz's lyrical So Sleepy Story.

It reminds me of another stellar moment in my library career, when back at the Chicago Public Library I wanted to order a popular sex education book, but at the last minute decided that I wanted to order two copies instead of one. That was the bad ol' days of typed order forms and carbon copies, so I typed the 2 beside the 1, intending to white out the 1. Alas, I forgot, and was shocked and dismayed to see on the next order report that in fact I had purchased 12 copies. Fortunately, the regional library kindly took 10 of them off my hands, but it just goes to show that there is a good reason I am a librarian and not an accountant.

Posted by susan at 8:53 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2006

An Unfortunate Book: The Beatrice Letters

I love Lemony Snicket--I know some children's librarians find it painful to read his books. I must have a harder heart, because they make me laugh. But it's not a small, incidental (here, meaning not of prime or central importance) piece of information that the pictures in The Beatrice Letters have large, punch-out letters that make it an almost impossible book for library collections.

We are currently in negotiations with Technical Services as to whether it will be worth reinforcing each letter with tape so it can't be punched out, or whether we will rely on the kindness of other, more patient libraries to fill our holds. It is even more annoying than the Dora the Explorer book that came a couple of weeks ago with a punch-out bracelet in the back cover.

And by the way, Ingram, it would have been nice if you had mentioned the word "consumable" (a word which here means, will wreck library books) somewhere on your iPage!

Edited to add: I love our Technical Services Dept! They taped all 26 of those darned letters three times over for the three copies! That took a whole lot of tape, and a whole lot of patience.

Posted by susan at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

October 6, 2006

Kids are better patrons than adults because....

*Adults never walk carefully along the blue line in the rug;
*Adults never play hopscotch on the two colors of tile by the drinking fountain;
*Kids don't get irritated with you when you ask them to stop talking in storytime;
*Kids never snap at you that it's ridiculous that other people have checked out all of the books about the Cherokee before they got there because they paid "all those taxes";
*Adults never crouch down to play peek-a-boo at the desk;
*Adults never gasp and lunge at the bookshelf and say, "Look! A book about scorpions!";
*Adults never look at the bunny on one side of the trees at the dept. entrance and then go around to the other side and curl up and pretend to be another bunny;
*Adults never love a book so so so so much that they read it ten times in a row--they also hardly ever hug and kiss books.
*Adults never really look adorable when they dress identically.
*Adults never wear a special pink dress to celebrate their birthday (and again, wouldn't look adorable).
*Adults are rarely overjoyed by the chance to shake some bells or dance with a scarf.
*When you work with kids, you sometimes have the feeling that you are getting the chance to help shape their lives.

Sure, there are ways in which adults are better patrons than kids, mostly involving keeping their various body fluids to themselves. But really, wouldn't you much rather work with kids? What are some other ways in which kids make better patrons than adults?

Posted by susan at 1:16 PM | Comments (0)

October 4, 2006

Are all books worth keeping?

I say No, not all books are worth keeping just by nature of being books. That may sound like blasphemy coming from a librarian, but at a certain point I think some books need to head to that great recycling bin in the sky.

On several children's literature listservs recently, the subject came up of what reviewers do with their ARC's (Advance Reading Copies). These are what used to be known as galleys or proofs, only now they are a lot nicer than they used to be and publishers seem to pass them out by the truckload at conferences, so they are getting in a lot more hands. The discussion started when children's literature expert Michael Thorne blogged about a publisher getting after him for selling his ARC's on E-bay.

I have always been a goody-two-shoes on this subject, and have faithfully tossed my ARC's into the recycling bin on the theory that writers shouldn't have their unfinished products being sold, complete with mistakes that will be (presumably) be cleaned up by final publication. But when I said that on ChildLit, it seemed to cause some authors a certain amount of angst to think of their work being destroyed. I still basically think I was right, though I may do a little more of handing ARC's to particular kids with an explanation of what it is.

Someone today posted about what to do with what's left after weeding a school library collection once the teachers and kids have taken what they want. Personally, I believe that anything that is being withdrawn for out of date material should NOT be passed along to hospitals, clinics, shelters, or anywhere else that was suggested. Don't poor kids or sick kids deserve correct information too? Pass them all the fiction, picture books, and less circulated but basically still correct books that you want--it's great to make that extra effort to give books a little more life for kids who need the material. But even though it makes me feel like a bad librarian, I say NOT all books are worth keeping.

Posted by susan at 5:24 PM | Comments (0)