Daily Thoughts 4/11/2009

Bookplate of Edgar Rice Burroughs

Daily Thoughts 4/11/2009

I put The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines on hold. He writes humorous fantasy. This book was on the Locus bestseller list so I thought might be fun to read.

I am focusing right now on reading Fundamentals of Collection Development & Management by Peggy Johnson. The book is very nice general overview. It does not go into a lot of detail, but it gives you some guidelines about what a collection development librarian does. The book was printed in 2004, so it is within the last five years in terms of practice. I found an interesting quote which I posted on twitter in the book, "The high purpose of book selection is to provide the right book for the right reader at the right time." Francis K. Drury. I might replace the word book with either information or media to update it to current practices, but it is spot on.

I finished reading this book tonight. Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management was an interesting book. It told me much of what I might need to do in the coming months: put together a user survery, review the way our books are shelved, review collection policy, look at our standing orders, examine our holds reports to see what we need to purchase, think about a three year plan for collection development are some of the ideas presented which may be worthwhile. It also went over the history of collection development and a lot of theory.

What it did not do is show me in any way how to do collection development. This is a common problem with the professional literature of librarianship, the literature tells you what you should do, but not how to do it. There is an assumption that you will learn by doing in a hands on sense. It is very hard to find books that are oriented towards practice. Maybe I have to read more professional journals, blogs, and wikis to get the current practice part.

I am also reading We The Media. It is quite enjoyable. They already mentioned a book called The Transparent Society by David Brin. David Brin is one of my favorite science fiction authors. There seems to be a strong connection between writing about the intenet and being a science fiction author. Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross are both on the Locus Bestseller list for science fiction and are very involved in issues around intellectual freedom and the internet.