[This year's December Days are categorized! Specifically: "Things I should have learned in library school, had (I/they) been paying attention. But I can make that out of just about anything you'd like to know about library school or the library profession, so if you have suggestions, I'll happily take them.]
There are three parts to the life of any item in a library - when it is selected, when it is on the shelf, and when it is deselected.
The only institution charged with owning everything published in the United States, according to the back of my brain, is the Library of Congress, and even then I'm sure they don't have physical shelf space for all the things that they are supposed to have on hand and available.
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alexseanchai wanted to know about how acquisition decisions are made. If I were the only librarian on staff at my system, was a school librarian, or was in a system where people with library degrees are administration instead of front-line staff, I would have a lot of practice at this point in selection and acquisition, and all the nighmares that come along with trying to get everything you want and still stay within the ridiculously small budget given for the year.
(Incidentally, school book fairs? Are fundraisers for the school library because most schools don't have the proper amount of resources to dedicate to their school libraries. This may be because they're getting shortchanged from the state that is supposed to fund them adequately or other pernicious influences like people who don't want to pay property taxes or that take student funding and go to private or charter schools with vouchers.)
At my current organization, and many of similar size, there are librarians specifically hired in to coordinate and do the buying of books for the entire system. Sometimes they farm some of that money and responsibility out to the librarians at the branches for things like replacing copies of books in their branches, because the branch staff would know that they're missing all three books of Ninjas of Love because they keep getting checked out until they're falling apart. Other times, they manage the system all from their perch, occasionally soliciting input and help from the branch librarians when things go missing or the last copies in the system are taken out.
So, how do we figure out what we're getting, and in what quantity, and in what format? There are some formulas that you can develop and use based on the available shelf space and the size of the location, taking into account whether certain locations tend to prefer one format over another, and so forth. As for figuring out what actually gets bought in the first place, there's a few tricks that I've picked up from the selectors that helps then turn the firehose of publishing (At least, the major houses) into a trickle.
Strangely enough, the publishers help out. Publishers, through the systems that libraries use to order their material, give what their new releases will be ahead of time so that we can order them and have them on the shelves reasonably close to their releases in bookstores. Combining that with knowing how much stock is going to be in a given warehouse from our ordering systems, we can make an educated guess on how much the publishers think this material is going to be a hit. (Or, in the case of movies, audiobooks, and large print formats, how much of a hit these materials have already been, since they release after print books or theatrical showings.)
But if we just went with what the intermediaries thought was going to be good, then we wouldn't need the professional staff. So there's extra criteria to take into account - for example, books that are shortlisted for the multitudes of publisher, state, and librarian-related awards are likely going to get more copies put on the shelves than normal, and are more likely to be reordered first. (Within reason. The Newberry books of the 1930s, for example, are very much not going to be in big quantities in any library that doesn't specifically have a collection for them. Plus, they're not usually all that in print, and things that are out of print are basically impossible to reorder - even if it's the best thing ever, if nobody's actively printing it, the library can't get it.) Materials that are on best-seller lists, or that are the sequels to authors, series, movies, etc. that are popular or very well-known (like James Patterson or J.K. Rowling) are going to get bought.
The tricky part is that just trying to take care of all of those requirements can eat your budget in a finger-snap. Especially if you're also adding electronic content of the same. And that's before you get into the world languages collections, the self-publishing realms, the small presses, and all the other people who the distributors may or may not be ignoring or not aware of and aren't bringing to your attention. Those are things where you have to have someone specifically recommend it to you, or have a very wide net of potential sources feeding you information about the things that you're missing, accompanied by the hope that your distributor might actually carry the author so that you can get it properly ready for your library without having to do original cataloguing and other things that might make what was a cheap thing prohibitively expensive.
(Librarians love recommendations! It's a concrete piece of feedback from the public about what they want. Things you recommend to us are much more likely to find their way to the shelves. Whether by acquisition or by interlibrary loan.)
And that's just buying the things. Library school could teach the basics of it, things about having a balanced collection and knowing to stay in the budget and the like. But a large part of acquiring materials is all about knowing the people that you're buying for, and that, well, that takes knowing the community that you land in with the job - experience, regrettably.
So, after things get bought and processed, they spend time sitting on the shelves, being checked out and examined and read and watched and otherwise used. At some time after their acquisition (often according to a schedule), everything that's on the shelves comes up for a decision of whether or not they're going to be able to stay on the shelves or be sent onward to the next phase of their life (often being surplused to a vendor that then sells used library books on places like Amazon and gives the library back some portion of the profit made from the sales). Many of the rules that accompany choosing also accompany de-choosing - balance of collection, knowing what the community likes, award winners and niminations, but also things come into account like when something was published, what sort of shape the material is in, how many times someone has consumed or checked out the material, whether or not the material itself contains inaccurate information, and so forth. (There's actually a fantastic document on my organization's intranet that explains, in acronym form, what to look for in deciding whether or not a thing should be taken out.)
Library school can teach the basics. Things don't get taken out because someone complains about them, things don't leave because the librarian doesn't like them, and so forth. But each librarian has to come up with their own formulas and criteria for when something leaves the library. My own formula has to do with circulation in relation to when the material was acquired, and whether or not the thing itself can reasonably expect to circulate more - bad condition things get taken out nearly immediately, and some of my non-fiction has to leave because it's been on the shelf ten years and it talks about things that were current when it was published, but that have long since moved on.
The truth is that a lot of things in relation to buying materials and deciding when it's time to retire them are tacit knowledge that comes from learning about the community you serve. Library school is not the best place to learn those things - which is why a lot of library schools have practical experience requirements as part of their degrees. This can backfire, though, if the library you work for is a different size or philosophy than the one that eventually hires you.
And I'm so sorry, school librarians. It's difficult enough to ave to instruct the students on the proper use of the library, in finding materials that suit the students, in supporting the faculty in their requirements, and then we also make you buy books and manage the collection with essentially no budget. And that's if we're lucky enough to have you at all, as there are more than enough schools that believe they can do without a professional librarian or a library on their campuses.
There are three parts to the life of any item in a library - when it is selected, when it is on the shelf, and when it is deselected.
The only institution charged with owning everything published in the United States, according to the back of my brain, is the Library of Congress, and even then I'm sure they don't have physical shelf space for all the things that they are supposed to have on hand and available.
alexseanchai wanted to know about how acquisition decisions are made. If I were the only librarian on staff at my system, was a school librarian, or was in a system where people with library degrees are administration instead of front-line staff, I would have a lot of practice at this point in selection and acquisition, and all the nighmares that come along with trying to get everything you want and still stay within the ridiculously small budget given for the year.(Incidentally, school book fairs? Are fundraisers for the school library because most schools don't have the proper amount of resources to dedicate to their school libraries. This may be because they're getting shortchanged from the state that is supposed to fund them adequately or other pernicious influences like people who don't want to pay property taxes or that take student funding and go to private or charter schools with vouchers.)
At my current organization, and many of similar size, there are librarians specifically hired in to coordinate and do the buying of books for the entire system. Sometimes they farm some of that money and responsibility out to the librarians at the branches for things like replacing copies of books in their branches, because the branch staff would know that they're missing all three books of Ninjas of Love because they keep getting checked out until they're falling apart. Other times, they manage the system all from their perch, occasionally soliciting input and help from the branch librarians when things go missing or the last copies in the system are taken out.
So, how do we figure out what we're getting, and in what quantity, and in what format? There are some formulas that you can develop and use based on the available shelf space and the size of the location, taking into account whether certain locations tend to prefer one format over another, and so forth. As for figuring out what actually gets bought in the first place, there's a few tricks that I've picked up from the selectors that helps then turn the firehose of publishing (At least, the major houses) into a trickle.
Strangely enough, the publishers help out. Publishers, through the systems that libraries use to order their material, give what their new releases will be ahead of time so that we can order them and have them on the shelves reasonably close to their releases in bookstores. Combining that with knowing how much stock is going to be in a given warehouse from our ordering systems, we can make an educated guess on how much the publishers think this material is going to be a hit. (Or, in the case of movies, audiobooks, and large print formats, how much of a hit these materials have already been, since they release after print books or theatrical showings.)
But if we just went with what the intermediaries thought was going to be good, then we wouldn't need the professional staff. So there's extra criteria to take into account - for example, books that are shortlisted for the multitudes of publisher, state, and librarian-related awards are likely going to get more copies put on the shelves than normal, and are more likely to be reordered first. (Within reason. The Newberry books of the 1930s, for example, are very much not going to be in big quantities in any library that doesn't specifically have a collection for them. Plus, they're not usually all that in print, and things that are out of print are basically impossible to reorder - even if it's the best thing ever, if nobody's actively printing it, the library can't get it.) Materials that are on best-seller lists, or that are the sequels to authors, series, movies, etc. that are popular or very well-known (like James Patterson or J.K. Rowling) are going to get bought.
The tricky part is that just trying to take care of all of those requirements can eat your budget in a finger-snap. Especially if you're also adding electronic content of the same. And that's before you get into the world languages collections, the self-publishing realms, the small presses, and all the other people who the distributors may or may not be ignoring or not aware of and aren't bringing to your attention. Those are things where you have to have someone specifically recommend it to you, or have a very wide net of potential sources feeding you information about the things that you're missing, accompanied by the hope that your distributor might actually carry the author so that you can get it properly ready for your library without having to do original cataloguing and other things that might make what was a cheap thing prohibitively expensive.
(Librarians love recommendations! It's a concrete piece of feedback from the public about what they want. Things you recommend to us are much more likely to find their way to the shelves. Whether by acquisition or by interlibrary loan.)
And that's just buying the things. Library school could teach the basics of it, things about having a balanced collection and knowing to stay in the budget and the like. But a large part of acquiring materials is all about knowing the people that you're buying for, and that, well, that takes knowing the community that you land in with the job - experience, regrettably.
So, after things get bought and processed, they spend time sitting on the shelves, being checked out and examined and read and watched and otherwise used. At some time after their acquisition (often according to a schedule), everything that's on the shelves comes up for a decision of whether or not they're going to be able to stay on the shelves or be sent onward to the next phase of their life (often being surplused to a vendor that then sells used library books on places like Amazon and gives the library back some portion of the profit made from the sales). Many of the rules that accompany choosing also accompany de-choosing - balance of collection, knowing what the community likes, award winners and niminations, but also things come into account like when something was published, what sort of shape the material is in, how many times someone has consumed or checked out the material, whether or not the material itself contains inaccurate information, and so forth. (There's actually a fantastic document on my organization's intranet that explains, in acronym form, what to look for in deciding whether or not a thing should be taken out.)
Library school can teach the basics. Things don't get taken out because someone complains about them, things don't leave because the librarian doesn't like them, and so forth. But each librarian has to come up with their own formulas and criteria for when something leaves the library. My own formula has to do with circulation in relation to when the material was acquired, and whether or not the thing itself can reasonably expect to circulate more - bad condition things get taken out nearly immediately, and some of my non-fiction has to leave because it's been on the shelf ten years and it talks about things that were current when it was published, but that have long since moved on.
The truth is that a lot of things in relation to buying materials and deciding when it's time to retire them are tacit knowledge that comes from learning about the community you serve. Library school is not the best place to learn those things - which is why a lot of library schools have practical experience requirements as part of their degrees. This can backfire, though, if the library you work for is a different size or philosophy than the one that eventually hires you.
And I'm so sorry, school librarians. It's difficult enough to ave to instruct the students on the proper use of the library, in finding materials that suit the students, in supporting the faculty in their requirements, and then we also make you buy books and manage the collection with essentially no budget. And that's if we're lucky enough to have you at all, as there are more than enough schools that believe they can do without a professional librarian or a library on their campuses.
