A surprising library

[mtbc]

I had previously mentioned our city library system's openly shelved books being but the tip of the iceberg compared with the stacks, the science fiction sections being small indeed when judged against some branches from other Scottish library systems.

I had a further surprise in visiting our modern art gallery. Not only is there a decent library branch in its basement but many of the books borne by its small science fiction section are the same as in some other branches, including my nearest. This isn't a surprise for classics, like The Forever War, but was more of a surprise for, frankly, books that have rather less reason to be commonly shelved. For instance, the system lists a whole eighteen copies of Humans, Bow Down, which isn't exactly the kind of book to leave one thinking about it for months afterward.

To put those eighteen copies into perspective, consider examples of books that I would expect large library systems to carry. Fairly randomly: for Stephen King's The Stand we seem to have no borrowable copies at all, and for Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose there is but one (currently on loan).

Initially, I had wondered if they have a broad selection and just choose oddly and uniformly what to shelve but, the more I probe, the more it seems that what they choose to buy and hold is not in the proportions that I might have guessed.

Comments

[aldabra]

Sometimes they buy a whole bunch of copies for book clubs. I don't know who decides what book clubs ought to be reading.

[shadowkat]

Is Humans, Bow Down by a Scottish or English author? Because that may be the reason - they are primarily choosing native authors? I've seen small American libraries do that.

[mtbc]

James Patterson so, in this case, maybe because he's such a well-known author. We do get good representation of locals, though, like Iain Banks and Ian Rankin.

[shadowkat]

James Patterson? Ugh. He doesn't even write his books - he outlines and hires other people to do the writing. It's literally paint-by-number. That's just...depressing.

I think people love him because you can fall asleep reading his stories and still figure out what is happening when you wake up two chapters later.

[mtbc]

That would indeed fit with this example!

[thewayne]

That is curious. It is entirely possible that the same person did the initial ordering for both libraries.

From what I understand, and I am not an expert in it, there are standard book lists and also standard packages that you can buy from book vendors to equip a new library. So you look up "Public library" and the American Library Association says these are a good starter kit, and you contact your state library association and they recommend an additional starter kit. And you also load up on subjects of regional and local interest.

For academic libraries, you start with the academic starter kit, add in packages for the different course areas that your university teaches, and also look at the state board for local recommendations.

I'm sure there are plenty of libraries who do their initial kitting-out based on sheer whimsy and looking at other area libraries.

How they do it in the UK, no clue.