Prompt Response Three

Our online catalog allows us to build digital displays called Showcases where we can go in and select which books we want to be on the homepage of the catalog. For February, I’ve been curating one called ‘Discover New Romance’ and have been adding exclusively newly released romance titles. 

I think a great physical display would be one that matches books to movies and tv shows; the ‘If you liked this…you should try this…’ kind of thing. I think another really interesting type of integrated advisory is when music is included. Some authors will post to their social media the playlists they were listening to as they wrote parts of their books. I think it would be a really cool display to match romance books to various music albums or songs. Soft sweet romance novels would fit with “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” the fun, fast-paced romances could be “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” and the teenage angst romance would fit the album Sour.

I think it broadens the availability of novels to choose from because it is less about plot points and more about aesthetics. Saying that a book reminds you of a song is far more subjective and may lead to some creative interaction. It could be a passive program of sorts where we build the display to say ‘What Song Does this Romance Novel Remind Me Of’ and as the books get checked out, patrons can add their song to the board.

Kirkus Style Review

    Billy Pilgrim was a completely ordinary American, until he became unstuck in time. 

In a novel sweeping decades, Billy Pilgrim’s experience in World War II dominates the narrative, as it is in 1944 that he first becomes unstuck in time. Stationed to be a chaplain’s assistant, Billy never met the chaplain he was assigned to, and instead was left wandering behind German lines with three others. Eventually they are taken as prisoners of war, and this takes them to Dresden. It is this plot point that establishes Slaughterhouse-Five as the testimony of Kurt Vonnegut and his attempt to make sense of human atrocity. The existence of the Tralfamadorians and their relationship with Billy Pilgrim also runs through the entirety of the novel. They introduce Billy to a new ideology that conflicts with the traditional concepts of time and meaning and free will, an ideology that Billy wrestles with in his attempt to embrace it. 

An astounding homage to the human experience and celebration of humanity.

Prompt Response Two

The perception of eBooks and eBook exclusive content is very interesting. In some ways, it has been super helpful for up-and-coming authors--they release a free version of their debut book and then subsequent ones cost money so if they win over their readers, they’ll have dedicated customers as well. In other ways, for traditional physical book readers, it’s frustrating because there may be books they want to read that just can't be accessed, like the Amazon Kindle exclusive releases. The debate surrounding artificial scarcity in relation to eBooks and eMaterial is also very interesting and impacts a library’s ability to provide eContent. Many patrons express their displeasure with the long hold times on Libby, but without buying multiple copies of the same eBook, there isn’t really a way for us to improve the system. 

I actually have very little insight into how we purchase eBooks or even what eBooks we purchase for the collection. I actually just requested the report for titles we own from our selection team earlier this week, so I should be getting that information soon, and I’m curious to see if it will be primarily eBook and eAudiobook versions of the popular bestsellers which is my prediction. 

The romance novel The Billionaire's First Christmas sounds like a Hallmark Christmas movie as a book. This doesn’t surprise me as a lot of the Hallmark Christmas movies are actually books first. These movies circulate fairly well at my library, so I could see similar books circulating too. That being said, I’m not sure how well this particular eBook would do against Debbie Macomber’s work or the other big name authors. As far as the reviews go, I do think they are reliable. That being said, I also think they both come from readers who are already inclined to read books of this genre which colors opinions as well. 

In regards to Angela’s Ashes, the fact that it has been reviewed by so many of the major review sources makes me inclined to think that it would do well in my library (I actually did pull up its item record and it has a lifetime circulation count of 73, with 2 of those being in the previous year). One of my tasks is to examine our Dead On Arrival rate at my library, and I’ve noticed that nothing seems to circulate as well as the best-selling titles. A telling indicator of a best-seller, is the number of professional reviews it has. However, if we hadn’t already owned this book, I would not have advocated for putting it on a purchase order. Seeing as it was published in 1996, I don’t think I could justify ordering it now. The same would be true if it ends up on our weeding list (we are in the midst of an intensive adult nonfiction weed), I would not recommend ordering a replacement copy. 

I’ve actually never cared much for book reviews. It’s a little funny because I’ll read a book, not enjoy it, and then go look for book reviews to see if other readers had the same opinion I did. I always have that hindsight thought of ‘oh, if I had looked for reviews before reading this book, I could’ve saved myself the time of reading it,’ but despite that reflection, I don’t do anything differently the next time. With that being my main purpose in reading reviews, I definitely feel like negative reviews are important! For instance, I am seriously offended by Erin Young’s thriller The Fields which has so many reviews but is a horrible portrayal of Iowa and Iowans. I combed through reviews looking for other people who recognized those issues (AND I just found out she wrote a sequel because it arrived in a brand new Baker & Taylor box on Friday … seven pages in and she had already written something problematic about Iowa). 

I think part of the distaste I have for reviews is that the field is oversaturated with a very specific type of book just as the prompt says. It’s so obvious that I feel like I can unpack a box of new releases at the library and point out which ones probably have professional reviews. The selection in our library has been outsourced via our contract with the company LibraryIQ which means I am not privy to the exact methods the team uses to select titles. I have noticed that we receive the majority of the books that are featured in BookPage Magazine, so I’m assuming that our selector is looking at reviews to some extent. But, our Dead On Arrival rate has increased this year, so as we move into budget season, we’re trying to identify where we need to make changes in our selection. 

Secret Shopper

 I felt that the best way to complete this assignment was to go with my younger sister to the public library in her city, which is about an hour away from mine. She is a very picky reader, so I knew that it would take longer to find something for her to read than it would for myself. Lately, she has been a nonfiction trend after reading Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. 

I thought that this would be a really interesting example for Reader's Advisory because nonfiction topics are very nuanced. My sister is working on her undergraduate degree in social work. This book was interesting to her because it focused on the ways cities and their zoning and housing rules have created a way for poverty to persist and thrive. The goal of our visit was to find more books that examine this very specific topic.

Right away, the librarian suggested Desmond's most recent book, Poverty, By America which my sister had expressed interest in. But it was clear to the librarian that my sister was looking for something more specific than that, and she did a wonderful job of engaging my sister in a conversation to reach the heart of her book request as we had settled on as our goal. Once that was shared, the book recommendations my sister left with were Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by M. Nolan Gray and The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein.