Week 15 prompt

I think there are two major arenas when it comes to marketing a fiction collection (or any collection) at the library. You have the physical world and the digital one. And both can be equally important and equally powerful if you use them right.

1) Book displays are the basic, go-to library marketing tool, which is most likely because they work and don't cost much. They are versatile, can be used for anything from children's picture books to complex works of non-fiction and anything in between. But I think these displays could be included in a library's website or blog as well. Pictures of the book covers are easy to come by, and most blogs etc make it pretty easy to turn an image into a link. They click the book and it takes them wherever you want them to go. The library's page for the item. The kirkus review of it. The book trailer. Goodread reviews. A library blog post talking about that specific book with a list of read-alikes. etc etc. While browsing the shelves is easily my favorite thing to do, the truth is, I, and many people, just don't have the time to do it in person. I go to the library to pick up holds and return books. All of my searching is done online and I would definitely make use of a display like that.


2) Utilize book trailers! Whether they are a part of your digital book display or part of a blog post reviewing the book, or just something you post to your facebook wall, a book trailer is a living breathing view of the book, made by the publisher to get people to read it. It's a pretty sweet piece of free media for a given book. I've talked about the book Steelheart several times this semester, so let's try that one.

Add some descriptive words: Revenge, Murder, Super-villains, Non-stop action!
And a link to the library's page: Check it out!
And there you have it. Fast, easy, and eye catching, it's an awesome foot in the door of people's attention spans.

3) Don't just offer RA services, promote them. Host a Reader Advisory day once a month for people to come in and "get their book future told" complete with crystal balls and assorted fun. Or, digitally, "You've heard of Ask a Librarian! Well why not ask a librarian what to read?" Yes, I understand that things can get lost in translation when they aren't face-to-face, but if reference interviews can be done via livechats then RA should have some success at it. Make it boldly obvious that RA is a thing people can do at the library. A lot of people I know were really surprised when I told them about taking this class, because they didn't realize that librarians could help them find fiction books to read.

4) Another idea, if you have a blog where the staff reviews or promotes books, have a Submit box where patrons can anonymously send in comments or reviews of books they've read. Then use the best ones for the blog. Or, collect groups and do a Patron Picks display on  given topic (Oh look, we have 14 romance novel reviews. Let's do that.). Since it's anonymous, and as long as it is in the Rules of Submission, you can even print them out and use them on a real life display in the library.

Week 14 prompt

To start off my discussion of 'specialty fiction' (African American, LGBTQA, short stories, poetry), I will say that at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Library, when I worked there, these were treated as separate collections. (Though we didn't have much in the way of LGBTQA anything, fiction or non-fiction.) And my experience with having them all split up like that is mixed. Poetry seemed to be very well received in its own space apart from the fiction. It was fairly well browsed and utilized. Short stories basically sat in their shelves and were ignored. The African American fiction was flat out offensive. Not because giving it its own space was offensive, but because whoever split it off into its own collection didn't include all African American authors. Almost everything in our "African American" display was Street Lit. Any book by an African American author that had any type of "intellectual quality" (what I was actually told when I asked) was put in our regular fiction. So, in short, if it was "trashy urban stuff" (again, I'm quoting,) it was in the African American section.

To sum up, nothing could have possibly turned me off to the idea of making separate sections for racial or orientation reasons than that. On a different note, I've heard horror stories of people peeing on, trashing, stealing materials from, and even setting fire to those collections. These mostly came from a blog I follow about a librarian who lives in a very homophobic area who was trying to build an LGBTQA collection. But the point is that by separating these materials you are making them a target.

More importantly, separating poetry makes sense to me, because poetry is a different art form than prose. Just like I wouldn't file the movies with the novels, I wouldn't file the poetry with the novels either. But an action packed novel by an African American author is still a novel and should be with the rest of the novels. Permanently filing it elsewhere is more an exclusion than anything. If you want it to be easy for patrons to track down things by authors of a certain race or orientation, or materials that include stories or characters of a specific race or orientation then it should be in the metadata so they can be searched for. You can also create reading lists or displays on the topic to help highlight that part of the collection. But to split them into groups like that? No. We do that enough with living people as it is. Let's not do it with the books too.

Week 13

The problem with new forms of literature, be they YA or NA or Graphic Novels or Street Lit etc etc is that they are new and long standing establishments are far slower to change than any single individual, or even a generation of people. Are there library patrons who would be better served if a given library had a solid collection of one or all of these genres? Absolutely. But the idea that there isn’t going to be a fight involved in getting those needs met is just plain silly. 

Libraries are underfunded. I don’t have research on this, but I would be pretty surprised if, at any point in history libraries were fully and abundantly funded. But even if that used to be a thing, it sure isn’t today.  Buying for many collection managers is often more about making a list of the best additions to the library, and then trying to see what they manage to get. By picking book A, they have to choose against book B even if it would be a great item for their library. So, on that front, the idea of putting one, or several, new line items in that budget is going to be met with resistance. 

Then you add in the negative stereotype attached to many of these genres.

YA is for kids.

Street Lit is way too graphic/violent/sexual/etc.

Graphic novels are for kids.

Graphic novels are way too graphic/violent/sexual/etc.

NA is... what? Who’s even heard of NA? Some, sure, but it isn’t entirely mainstream knowledge. I hadn’t even heard the term before this year.

Oh, and manga is just Weird Asian Comic Books.

And, by the way, kids don’t pay for libraries. Grown-ups do. We have to make sure to cater to our money base before we waste money on ‘extras for the kids’.

Additionally, focusing on Manga and Graphic Novels for a second, these are almost always series. Especially if it is big enough, popular enough, to gain mainstream attention. If you start buying a serial, can you afford to keep buying it. Or, if it is a super popular series that has been out forever, can you afford to buy what is already out (or the whole series if it’s complete) ? Do you start buying the new issues that people want and will circulate or do you try to start from the beginning? 

This isn’t as much an issue with the YA, SL, or NA genres, in my opinion, simply because of the age of the genre.  Stories aimed at these genres are far more recent than graphic novels, which in turn is far more recent than manga. Add to that the fact that both manga and graphic novels have their own publishing houses, which makes them more of an entire different form of media than books. Talking about developing a graphic novel collection from scratch at this point would be like telling a library that has no visual media (movies, dvds, etc) to go out and start building one. There is just too much content available. It’s daunting. Just walk into any comic book store and walk around. And then think about the fact that what you are seeing is mostly new content, with some collections of really popular, good selling materials.

Which is why I don’t judge a library when I go in to see if they have a manga series I want to read and I realize that they have volume 1-3, 7, 9-12, and 25. It’s insanity to me, from the inside, because I know what I’m looking for and what I’m looking at. But even the best efforts of a librarian with limited knowledge and limited funds isn’t going to effect change overnight. Getting any kind of comprehensive collection of these types of materials and genres into libraries is just going to take time and a lot of effort.

Week 12 - Reader Advisory Matrix

1. Where is the book on the narrative continuum?

This book is pretty solidly narrative, reading like an engaging physics lecture or TED talk.

2.  What is the subject of the book?

The universe of Star Trek and how it might actually work, if it had to fall within the scientific laws of our universe.

 

3. What type of book is it?  Science

4.  Appeal

                a. Pacing:  The book goes in spurts. It is a quick read during some of the stories and examples, but slows significantly during the explanation parts. It's better off reading in chunks.

                b. Characters:   The only real characters in the book are the narrator and, referenced, the characters from Star Trek: The Original Series.

                c. Feel of the story: Light-weight and hopeful

                d. Intent of the Author:  To build a bridge between the pop culture interest in Star Trek: TOS and the actual physics involved.

                e. Focus of the story: Physics and what could be invented in the future.

                f. Does the language matter? It does. The hard sciences are stereotypically not very accessible and since the whole point of this book is to make them more accessible, the choice of language is extremely important.

               g. Is the setting important and well described? Setting isn't extremely important to this book, though it does play a role. To help make his information more interesting the author frequently has the reader 'imagine you are on the bridge of the Enterprise'. Having that setting in your mind while reading does help get through some of the drier parts.

                h. Are there details and if so, what? The book is filled with details about physics and how it works. That being said, the details are purposefully kept light and surface level. It is a book to throw around ideas and theories about futuristic physics. It is not a textbook to teach you physics.

                i. Charts and other graphic materials: The book contains a few charts and illustrations. It also has a series of black and white photos in the center of the book showing real life awesome achievements in scientific research.

                j. Does the book stress moments of learning, understanding, or experience? This book has a major focus on understanding. It takes all of the random, science-y sounding terminology tossed around in an episode of Star Trek and makes the reader really understand what the character means when they say those things.

5. Why would a reader enjoy this book (rank appeal)?

            1.  The feel of the book - Star Trek is inherently a hopeful future, where mankind has been able to work together to overcome a lot of the issues we now face. And while this book doesn't go into the philosophical aspects of human nature, it makes the science of the series seem almost within our reach.

            2. The language used. I will freely admit, I have a BA in English. I took exactly one science class in college and that class could have been retitled "Chemistry for Dummies". I expected to want to be able to understand and enjoy this book, but I didn't really expect to be able to. I was greatly mistaken. Sure, it wasn't something I could sit down and read in one sitting, but it was comprehensible. Even to me.

            3. The pop culture draw. A lot of the people who like Star Trek have some type curiosity toward the world around them. The whole premise of the show is exploration, not only of the world around us but of us humans as well. This book presents a chance to turn that curiosity on the idea of Star Trek itself.

Week 11 response

The thing I always think about first, when someone mentions e-books or audiobooks, is convenience. It's easier to carry around a kindle etc than a whole bunch of books. It's easier to read a book when you can switch up the formatting to the way you like it best. It's easier to log in and download a new book than going out and buying or borrowing one. It's more convenient to just pop on an audio book and let the story play as you drive or go for a jog or wash the dishes or whatever else requires your hands but not your mind.
In regards to Reader Advisory and recommending books to people there is also something to be said for recommending  book without having to deal with the preconceived notions tied in with cover and book design. Many different genres have distinctive cover styles. Just by glancing at the front of a book I can, fairly accurately, tell whether a book is a romance, a mystery, Scifi, fantasy, a popular suspense title, etc. Even within a given genre there are different tropes for cover art. There are certain fantasy books that I can tell just from the cover that I won't enjoy, because I know X-type stories get X-type of covers. I know I, and plenty of other people, get into reading ruts and it's easy to get boxed in by book cover assumptions. Or page number. Or size and design of the book. By taking away those properties it becomes harder to stay in that exact rut you've been in. It also becomes easier to sell someone on a new book if they don't come at it prejudging because of visual aspects.

That being said, there are some drawbacks to these formats. Books don't have to be charged. You can't corrupt a book file, crack its screen, or accidentally delete a book. Also, when reading a print book your hands and mind are occupied with that activity. Reading electronically, for me at least, always has the temptation to go... check my email, scroll down Tumblr, watch a kitten video, etc. There are too many other options. Listening to audio books are even worse. Not only does it take me a lot longer, to listen to a book that to read one , but without the visual aspect of reading my likelihood of getting distracted from the story is almost a certainty. By switching to a less traditional format I lose the ability to do justice to the story.

Fantasy Annotation

 

Author: Hilari Bell

Title: The Goblin Wood

Genre: Fantasy

Publication Date: 2003

Number of Pages: 371

Plot Summary: When the religious run government turns against the lesser magic workers 12 year old Makenna is forced to watch her mother, a hegewitch, drown at the hands of their fellow villagers. Barely escaping into the woods, she encounters and teams up with the Goblins, becoming their General as they take the war to the humans. Years pass and the government views her as a threat, so they send a war-trained knight to kill her.

 

Subject Headings: 

 Witches

Knights and Knighthood

Goblins

Magic

Persecution

 

Appeal: 

World Building

Intricate Plot

Fast-paced

Suspenseful

 

Similar Authors and Works: 

  

Starcrossed - by: Elizabeth C. Bunce

A Hat Full of Sky - by: Terry Prachett

The Gift - by: James Patterson

Midterm Booktalks

Nothing makes me quite as panicked and anxious as public speaking. Lots of practice has given me some kind of control over it, but I don't go into a presentation without a plan. To that end I needed to know exactly who my audience was and why I was giving this booktalk. So I invented a scenario. Then I designed a script and book descriptions for the people I was talking to. If I was talking to, say, middle schoolers, I would have written something completely different. Because this would have been a more formal talk I would either have memorized my script completely (which I didn't have time for in this instance) or used noted cards. In a more relaxed setting, as long as I was talking about books I had personally (and recently) read I would be more willing to wing it.

Super thanks to my fiance Alex for playing camera man all night. He only laughed at me a little.

Women's Lives and Relationships (Classic) Annotation - Little Women

Author: Louisa May Alcott

Title: Little Women

Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Lives and Relationships

Publication Date: 1968/1969

Number of Pages: 512

Geographical Setting: New England

Time Period: The second half of the 19th century

Series: Book 1 of the Little Women series

Plot Summary:  Little Women is a young woman's answer to the typical coming of age story. It revolves around the lives of four sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, and is set during the American Civil War. With the absence of their father, who is away serving as a minister to the troops, they all struggle to figure out who they are and how they fit into their family. Gently supported by their mother, Marmee, they struggle to grow up as they try to make ends meet. Their struggles and adventures are helped along by their kind and wealthy neighbor, Mr. Laurence, and his high spirited grandson Laurie.

 

Subject Headings: 

 March Family

Nineteenth Century

Sisters/young women/girls --New England -- History -- 19th century

 

Appeal: 

Character Driven

Family Saga

Feel-good

Moving

Similar Authors and Works: 

  

Little Women is book 1 out of 4 and all the rest are well worth reading. In order they are:

• Good Wives
• Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys
• Jo's Boys: and how they turned out

 

•   The Penderwicks - Jeanne Birdsall -- While vacationing with their widowed father in the Berkshire Mountains, four lovable sisters, ages four through twelve, share adventures with a local boy, much to the dismay of his snobbish mother.

 

• Dragons of Silk - Laurence Yep --  The last book in a series, this book tells the story of four generations of Chinese and Chinese-American girls that are all bound together by the family tradition of raising silkworms.

• The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew - Margaret Sidney -- Book 1 in a series, it tells the story of the widowed Mrs. Peppers and her five children. The book follows the struggles they face as they try to keep fed and clothed, etc, but also the great love they have for each other as a family. Any of the books in this series would be a great read-alike

 

Other notes: On the one hand this isn't the type of book I usually read. There is no splash of magic. There are no space battles. It is the simple story of four sisters and how they go about balancing the needs of their family with their own need to grow up and find themselves. But at the same time, it is very similar to what I read in that it is a detailed, realistic, character driven novel. I think that was what made me love it as a child and what still makes me love it today.

On a totally different note, however, there was something I noticed when rereading this book as a fully grown adult with other concerns besides simply if I like the story and characters or not. In a lot of ways that my fantasy and SciFi books are not, this book is easy to read. It's relaxing. Because I don't have to sit here and wonder if this novel is going to pass the Bechdel Test. I don't have to take a second and cringe because the main female character has just done something completely stereotypical and dumb because OF COURSE the main male character has to be allowed to save her dramatically at least once. How else is she supposed to go from hating him to falling in love with him? Honestly, Women's Lives and Relationships is a genre I kind of wish didn't exist because I wish it didn't need to exist. Because it makes it feel like, well if all the women's stories are in this genre, then all of the other genres are mostly going to be men's stories and that sucks.

SciFi Annotation - Steelheart

 

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Title: Steelheart

Genre: Science Fiction

Publication Date: September 2013

Number of Pages: 400

Geographical Setting: Chicago

Time Period: Modern setting, slightly in the future

Series: Book 1 of a projected "Reckoners" series

 

Plot Summary:  More than a decade ago, a mysterious event known as Calamity created Epics—powerful beings straight out of the comics, complete with both incredible abilities (invulnerability, illusion, transmutation) and silly weaknesses (smoke, UV light, being attacked by someone exactly 37 years old). Thus far, the Epics appear to be wholly corrupt, with villains rising up to subjugate humans and take over the world. David’s father was killed by a ruthless Epic named Steelheart, and David, now 18, has waited 10 years for revenge, certain that he holds the key to Steelheart’s weakness. Hooking up with a ragtag group of rebel Epic-killers, David and crew knock off Steelheart’s subordinates and lure him out. Although readers may not be surprised at the twists that arise, the near-constant action, Sanderson’s whiz-bang imaginings, and a fully realized sense of danger (the brutal opening scene alone will hook many) make this an absolute page-turner. (Publishers Weekly, vol 260, issue 28, p)

 

Subject Headings: 

Superhuman abilities 

Coming of age

Dystopias

Revenge 

Teenage boys

Imaginary wars and battles

 

Appeal: 

Fast-paced

Compelling

Suspenseful

Action packed

Intricate world-building

Similar Authors and Works: 

 

• Subject Seven -  by James A Moore : Subject Seven--the dangerous alter-ego living inside a teenage boy--has escaped the government lab in which he was created in order to seek out others like him and build an army capable of destroying their creators.

•   Little Brother - by Cory Doctorow :Computer hacker Marcus spends most of his time outwitting school surveillance, until the day that San Francisco is bombed by terrorists -- and he and his friends are arrested and brutally interrogated for days. When they release Marcus, the authorities threaten to come for him again if he breathes a word about his ordeal; meanwhile, America has become a police state where everyone is suspect. For Marcus, the only option left is to take down the power-crazed Department of Homeland Security with an underground online revolution. 

• The Second Angel - by Phillip Kerr : In the year 2069, plagues and climatic changes have wreaked havoc on the world, and a new virus that can only be cured by an infusion of uninfected blood runs rampant, with the moon housing America's federal reserve of the priceless commodity.

• Blackout - by Robison E Wells : A mysterious virus is spreading through America, infecting teenagers with incredible powers--and a group of four teens are about to find their lives intertwined in a web of danger and catastrophic destruction

 

Other notes: I am, and will always be, extremely biased toward Brandon Sanderson. He is one of my favorite fantasy authors and has tremendous skill in that arena. However, this book is quite a departure from his other works. It is pure science fiction. It reads like a comic book in novel form. It is simpler than, for example, Elantris or his Mistborn trilogy. But that isn't to say that it is any less of a quality book. When I say simpler, I mean easier to read. Aimed for a slightly younger audience, or at least accessible to a slightly younger audience than some of his other works. The world he creates is just as intricate. The plot, while more straight forward than the others he has written, has enough twists and turns to keep the reader enthralled til the last page. (Then, if you're lucky like me, you get to read a bonus version of the first chapter with comments and notes included from Sanderson himself.)This would be a great book for anyone to read, but I would absolutely recommend it for those middle and high school reluctant readers. Or that kid who only reads his comic books and manga. With its comic book feel it would be a great transitional tool to wield.

Prompt 7 - Book Controversies

The book controversy I found most intriguing was the issue surrounding Gunter Grass. Unlike the scandal of other fake memoirs, such as "A Million Little Pieces", Grass doesn't make up fake truths about himself in his books. Instead, Grass leaves a key piece of information out. During World War II Grass spent some time as a member of the SS. But the problem wasn't that he hid it in his memoir "Peeling the Onion". The problem was that he spent about 60 years after the war publishing books and making waves in the political world without mentioning that little fact.

Now, I'm not going to touch the content of Grass's secret, as that is a whole other type of discussion. Who Grass is as a person, how people should view him, how they should view his political activism is a conversation that could fill any number of blog posts. But beyond that, in terms of the literature I think there's two very different things to consider.

The first and foremost is that, when writing a chronicle of his life, Grass told the truth, at least as far as we know. The great revelation was in the book, not discovered some time later like with other memoir issues (e.g. A Million Little Pieces). Whether you agree or disagree with who Grass is, whether you choose to buy the book or not, is up to each reader individually. But what you see is what you get for the content, just like with any other memoir.

The second thing to consider is the rest of his body of work. But the one thing people need to remember, is that the author is not his characters. I see this kind of argument a lot. "How can you like that book? It was written by X-author, who is a terrible person." or "How could Y author, who is such a big feminist, write a character like that?" And every time it boils down to, the author is not their characters. Unless you want to live in a world that contains no fiction at all you have to allow for that distinction.

In the end, in this situation, the decision is as it ever was. You either buy the book or you don't. You either know everything about the author or you don't. In times past, before we became so celebrity focused there was a pretty big chance most of the readers of a given book didn't know anything about the authors they read. The work stood on its own. Maybe it was better that way.

Horror Annotation - Hannibal Rising

Author: Thomas Harris

Title: Hannibal Rising

Genre: Crime Fiction, Thriller, Horror, Mystery

Publication Date: December 6, 2006

Number of Pages: 323

Geographical Setting: Lithuania, France

Time Period: World War II/post-WWII

Series: Hannibal Lecter series

Plot Summary: The fourth book published in the Hannibal Lecter series, this book is the first chronologically. It opens in 1941 Lithuanian when Hannibal Lecter is just a child and follows along as he endures the great tragedies that will shape his entire life. As the Germans invade his family first flees, then gets caught in the crossfire, and everyone except for Hannibal and his younger sister Mischa are killed. When a band of looters find them, Mischa is lost as well. Hannibal barely escapes with his life. Later he is found in an orphanage by his uncle and taken back to France. There he grows up, under the care of his aunt-by-marriage and struggles to recover his missing memories of what really happened to his sister. By the time he is grown he has gained both a medical education and the memory of the looters killing and eating his sister. What follows is a tense and grizzly road of revenge.

Subject Headings: 

World War II

Violence

Revenge

Cannibalism

Child Abuse/Trauma

Family Death

Murder

Appeal:

Intricately plotted/plot driven

Fast paced

Disturbing, Menacing,Gritty

Dramatic/Suspenseful

Similar Authors and Works:

The remaining 3 Hannibal Lecter books: Red Dragon, Hannibal, and The Silence of the Lambs.

Along Came a Spider - James Patterson

• Washington, D.C., police detective Alex Cross becomes caught up in a kidnapping case that may involve Gary Soneji, a teacher at an elite private school who is also a schizophrenic psychopath and serial murderer.

Box 21 - Anders Roslund

• Sold into sex slavery in their pursuit of better lives in Sweden, Lithuanian girls Lydia and Alena learn of a chance to secure their freedom and take revenge on their enslavers.

Every Bitter Thing - Leighton Gage

• The son of the Foreign Minister of Venezuela is found dead in his apartment in Brasilia. Due to the political nature of the crime, Chief Inspector Mario Silva of Brazil's Federal Police is called in to investigate. As he delves deeper into the murder, he discovers that a chain of murders have occurred throughout Brazil, all with the same MO: victims are first shot in the stomach, then brutally beaten to death, and, even more puzzling, they were all passengers on TAB flight 8101 from Miami to Säao Paulo. What sinister motive connects these killings? And why does it appear one passenger on that flight, a fifteen-year-old boy who was later raped and killed in prison, is at the heart of it all?

Other notes:This book was not nearly as good as I wanted it to be. When I looked into the history of the book and read that the author wrote it only because he either had to write it or the movie studio would give his iconic series to someone else to finish without his input... it became a lot more understandable. The origin story of Hannibal Lecter should have been so much more than this, or it should have been left shrouded in mystery for all time. Because the character of Hannibal Lecter is so much of a god-modded Mary Sue I honestly don't see how this story could have been told better. Also, while this book is listed as fast-paced I found it seemed to drag on. Any quickness came from time skips, or unbelievably shortened timelines. This book also wasn't really scary or horrific. The majority of the creepiness came from Lecter's (and Inspector Popil's) weird obsession with Lecter's Aunt, not the murders, dead bodies, gore, or cannibalism. The only real redeeming factor I found was the look at the daily life in post-WWII France. Most history books jump straight from "the end of the war" to "The 50's" and this book has an interesting look into what it was like, in Europe, as people picked up the pieces.