Today was a little quieter than usual; it usually starts out very quiet, but gets pretty busy once school lets out, but for some reason we didn't get the usual after school crowd today. There was a steady trickle of families with small children, though. There weren't many toys and puzzles to clean up, but several faceouts needed replacing and the shelves needed quite a bit of straightening since a middle school group had been in earlier. I also ran the report of requested items and got them all pulled, processed, and ready to send out to the respective branches by the time the evening crew came in.
I had a chance to look over some new books that had come in, but nothing really stood out. There's usually a bit of a lull after the big summer release boom. In between helping patrons and straightening shelves, I worked on storytime planning and collection development for the storytime bus. I have been trying to put together a kit (assorted books & activities for a theme) for a cowboy theme, which has turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Though there are a number of picture books related to cowboys, most of them are far too long for a preschool storytime.
I have found 4 or 5 that I really like, and another 4 that are maybe's, and I found a few more at my local library that we do not have where I work that I've reserved so I can look over them tomorrow. I thought expanding it to include horse books would help, but there really aren't that many picture books about horses that aren't too long, either. There are quite a few early readers about horses, but they usually don't make the best group read-alouds. If I can get at least 6 books I really feel good about, I think it will be doable, though.
Today all the customer service was routine, checking in returns, checking out items, helping people find materials, and validating parking. I did see a few regulars, including the little boy who usually comes in as Batman. However, he surprised me today by switching things up and showed up as Raphael, of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, complete with shell, mask, and ninja swords. It was nice to see how he and the other little kids that were there played at the train table together, and then I noticed another patron's daughter helping him figure out a game on the computer. It's always refreshing to see polite children willing to share and help others!
So I've been in my new position for almost 2 months, and I'm finding that there is quite a bit of collection development to be done; more than I expected. I just wish I had more time to work on it! I am only part-time, so by the time I spend three mornings on the Storytime Bus doing outreach storytimes at daycares and one shift at the children's desk, that only leaves me one morning a week to work on all the planning, scheduling, and collection development for the storytime bus. It really isn't enough, but I do not want to give up my shift at the children's desk, so the collection development will just have to go a little slower than I'd like for now.
By collection development, I'm referring to a very specific collection: the themed "kits" that we use for the storytime bus. A kit is basically storytime-in-a-box, a plastic bin filled with a selection of books the follow the given theme, as well as songs, rhymes, felt boards, and other activities to go with them. These kits allow for a variety of materials in order to accommodate the varied ages and attention spans of the daycares we serve, the different tastes and styles of the presenters (myself and our volunteers), and to keep it from being overly monotonous for the presenters. There are currently about 32 kits that were put together by the person who founded the program, and recently retired, plus another 10 or so partially developed kits and a shelf of books that may or may not need to be added to various kits.
I had initially expected the only collection development to be done would be the development of new kits for new themes. But as I started going through the existing kits, I realized they needed some work, too. I found that some of the books in them are just too long and not engaging enough for the age of the kids we are serving and some may need to be weeded or put in the general Outreach collection. I've also found some kits are missing some very good books that I know are perfect read-alouds for this age, and some kits just don't seem to have very many books that I would typically use. I realize tastes and styles vary, so I will only remove the books that I am certain are too long, and mostly just add books to each that are more my style and more what I think is appropriate for this age. Additionally, I have discovered some of the books in the kits do not actually belong to Outreach and were borrowed from the circulating collection and need to be returned to their respective home branches and re-ordered for Outreach if deemed necessary.
To go through all these kits to inventory and evaluate the contents to see what is needed will take quite a bit of time. Then researching and selecting books to order and add to the collection takes even more time. For now, I am going through them as I use them and trying out books I'm considering adding. I will also have to evaluate the extension activities in each and work on adding some new activities and making additional flannel stories to go with them. And at the same time, trying to develop at least a couple of new kits before the end of the year. So as you can imagine, this will be a slow and time-consuming process. I could probably easily make a full-time position out of it with all the collection development that really needs to be done, but that isn't an option right now, so I will do the best I can.
I do really like doing the collection development, though, particularly starting new kits from scratch with themes that I choose. I like the idea of having a little bit more of "me" in the collection and feeling more invested in the whole thing. But the most important thing to remember in collection development is to meet the needs of the community you serve, not to use the collection as your personal repository. The mission of the storytime bus is to promote early literacy skills by taking storytimes out to the community via area daycares. In my opinion, the most important early literacy skill that all others build upon is the appreciation of books and reading. If a child doesn't perceive reading as being enjoyable and useful, they won't get very far with the other literacy skills.
So my goal in my collection development first and foremost is to make storytime fun and engaging, to give children as many positive associations with books and reading as possible. If they learn any "concepts" such as letters, numbers, shapes, etc., along the way, that's just gravy. I don't care if books are considered classics, are by well-known authors, or are award winners. I just care if the kids will be engaged and will enjoy listening to them, so I often use books other people overlook, and I don't try to force books that don't really work just because they are by a beloved author. The great thing about being a former children's page is that through shelving and shelf-reading I have literally handled every book in our collection, and I often find hidden gems that are great read-alouds that no one else seems to know about that make great additions to a storytime collection.
School started back this week in our area, so it was a pretty quiet day, though we did have a few people trickle in and out with younger kids before school let out, then some with older kids came in afterward. I was a little disappointed Batman didn't pay us a visit today :)
So today was a good day to get some housekeeping done. After I cleaned up the few puzzles and blocks that were in the floor, I straightened the shelves and filled displays. Next I withdrew a cartful of picture books the children's librarian had weeded. I always feel bad for some of them; there are *SO* many picture books published every year and there are always some good ones that just get overlooked and end up getting weeded eventually because they just don't circulate. I came across one in this batch called Zoom! by Diane 
Adams, who is apparently a not so well-known author that writes primarily Christian romance. Zoom! is a cute picture book about a little boy and his father going to ride a roller coaster. The story is cute, as in the beginning the little boy is scared, but by the end it's the father who decides to sit it out while the boy gets back in line for another ride. The text is short and has lots of action and expressive, descriptive words and I could immediately see it being a fun read-aloud. So I decided to rescue it and give it a second life in the outreach collection for the storytime bus :)
My next bit of housekeeping was the missing list, which is as the name implies, a list of all the books in our collection that have been marked missing. My job was to make one more effort to physically locate these items on the shelf, as sometimes they have turned up in the meantime. This happens because sometimes patrons accidentally take books without getting them checked out, they've been miss-shelved, someone just didn't look hard enough, or the item may have been a little slow at getting back to us after being returned at another branch. But the majority have been lost or stolen, so checking the missing list can sometimes be a little depressing, especially the DVD's. We check-in the ones that turn up, and withdraw the ones that still remain missing after several attempts to locate. But, I like a challenge, and pride myself in finding things others couldn't. I think I look a little harder, and I'm pretty good at guessing where something might have been miss-shelved. I found about a dozen items in the Easy and Juvenile collections, and then was pleasantly surprised to find several items in the Teen section as well, even some graphic novels and manga!
I still had a few patrons who had questions or needed assistance with check-out as well, and I was also able to run the "send list" - the report listing items patrons have requested from our collection that need to be sent to other branches - and located all those items and checked them all in and had them tagged, sorted and ready to go to their respective destinations, plus issued myself a program card. So even though it was quiet, it was a very productive afternoon after all.
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| AWKWARD! |
Yesterday was my first official day working the children's desk as a library assistant, and though it was initially slow, later on it got really busy (of course after the librarian went back to her office and left me on my own). But relatively uneventful; just the usual reminding noisy tweens/teens to keep it down or they don't get anymore computer time, dealing with the *ALWAYS* malfunctioning games computers, and straightening up the DVD shelf for the billionth time, plus the usual questions, check-out assistance, and phone calls. All in a day's work :)
But one awkward situation did come up, thankfully while the children's librarian was still at the desk with me. A little girl approached the desk and asked the librarian where such and such book was. When she could not find it in the catalog, the librarian asked if she knew the author, to which the little girl replied "My Mimi wrote it", but she couldn't provide the name. We were both inwardly cringing, expecting what we were about to hear, as the mom explained it was a book her mother-in-law had written, [self-]published, and "donated" to the library about a month ago, and she would think it should be on the shelf by now.
I held my breath, my mind whirling with possible explanations, and wondering how much we should, or could, even tell them since *they* weren't the author. If it was actually sent in as a "donation", it would have gone straight to the Friends for selling in the bookstore or to be recycled if deemed not sellable. If it was sent in through proper channels as a submission for consideration to be added to the collection, then it would have to be reviewed by the youth services manager and children's librarians for each branch to determine if it met selection criteria. Most of these self-published books end up being politely rejected. Of course at that moment, we had no idea what had happened in this specific case, and you don't want to tell a little kid that Mimi's work might not have been up to snuff or could have been discarded like trash!
In the end, the librarian made the best possible choice in the situation and just truthfully said she didn't know what had happened to it, or where in the process it might be, and "they" just may not have gotten to it yet, without going into the possibilities, which is what I would have done as well.
But, it got me to thinking how others might have handled it, and how self-published books are handled in general, so I posed the question to an online group of children's librarians and other youth services professionals, and got a variety of answers. Many commiserated with the uncomfortable situation of dealing with self-published books that often are not very good; it seems everyone thinks they can write a children's book these days. Others felt torn, wanting to give new authors a chance, especially local ones, but were uneasy about adding such books to the general collection. And a couple took a different tact, feeling that all local authors should be celebrated and promoted, by displaying their books prominently on a special shelf for local authors.
I do like the idea of having a local author shelf and helping to promote local talent, or at least give them a chance, then letting the public decide what stays and what goes via circulation. I think this is a great idea for small-town libraries, but I wonder if it's feasible in larger libraries/systems? How local is "local"? And should there be *any* standard for inclusion? After all, not all self-published authors have talent just waiting to be discovered like Christopher Paolini (whose self-published book Eragon was brought to the attention of a publisher by author Carl Hiaasen after his son read and enjoyed it); some are real stinkers! I fear our system would be quickly over-run if we put every book written by any author in the greater region we serve on the shelves; there are already so many new picture books published by the major houses every year. Maybe e-books would be a viable alternative?
Any thoughts??
