When the majority of people hear “library,” they think about books. Maybe a specific library springs to mind, like the ghost-occupied one in Ghostbusters that freaked me out as a child (it’s sort of amazing I ended up voluntarily working in this field), or the one in Pawnee that Leslie Knope will tell you is … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Library Collections
It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s…A New Collection at the Library!
BPL has long had a collection of graphic novels (aka sequential art, aka long comic books) for kids, but when it came to graphic novels for adults, our copy of Watchmen for years stood alone in a forest of its wordy novel fellows. It was quite tragic, as some truly great stories are told in … Continue reading
No Más Excusas
Whenever somebody asks me if the library has books in Spanish, I’m fortunately able to answer yes, but then most unfortunately have to follow it up with the caveat that we don’t have many of them, and they have to be hunted down in the general collection in which they are interfiled. It’s an answer … Continue reading
In With the Old
For many library users, it’s all about the new books. They want the freshest, hottest, burnin’-up-the-best-seller-list titles. We can dig it, and we’re happy to accommodate; we put our new items center stage on our front shelves. We know where our bread is buttered. However, as of lover of bread and carbs in … Continue reading
If I Haven’t Read it, it’s New (Adult) to Me
In most public libraries I’ve seen, books are separated into three main categories: children (or juvenile), young adult (or teen), and adult. These categories are mighty broad, and while some books don’t fit snugly into just one, they, for the most part, get the job done pretty well for classification and discovery purposes. Last week, … Continue reading
The Library Takes a Cue From a Fictional Beet Farmer
On multiple occasions, I’ve heard TV pejoratively referred to as the “idiot box.” I understand why people would condemn it with such a hateful name; there’s a lot of mind-numbing junk littering its landscape. But TV has also got a lot of great stuff to offer. Educational stuff. Stuff to that can improve your life. … Continue reading
Hoarding vs. Weeding: The Eternal Struggle
I’m something of a hoarder. I don’t have an acute case of the hoardsies like those extreme hoarders on that hoarding show (I think it’s called “People Who Can’t Throw Stuff Away”), but I’m willing to acknowledge that I have a slight problem. I don’t have rooms full of used styrofoam food containers or anything … Continue reading
Hi, My Name is Melvil Dewey
Earlier this week, I was helping a patron and her daughter find some books, an everyday occurrence here in library land. During the process, she pulled a book from the shelf and later wanted to put it back. Clearly a little unsure of where to put it, she said, “I think it goes here,” and … Continue reading
The Library: A Place to Rent Up Movies
Everybody knows the library is THE place to go for books. We’re a veritable IHOB (International House of Books). While many of us use the library primarily to access free print materials, there’s a large contingent of folks who like to, in the paraphrased words of Lisa Simpson, go down to the liberry* and rent … Continue reading
Non-Fiction Has Its Day
A few months ago, I posted about the most popular book in the library’s collection. Now, in calculating the winner of that popularity contest, I included both fiction and non-fiction books, but since non-fiction vs. fiction in a public library is like a bizarro David vs. Goliath in which Goliath stomps David mercilessly, I thought … Continue reading
The Shelf Life 