Daily Thoughts 9/8/2009

Auguste Renoir La Liseuse

Daily Thoughts 9/8/2009

I just finished reading Shutter Island on the train to work this morning. It is a novel of psychological suspense set in a prison for the criminally insane. Is the prison really a place for secret government experiments on inmates or is the visiting United States Marshall really a mad man? It has an entertaining plot. The copy I read was a paperback.

This morning I put my orders in palce. I am also helping someone do an order for math books. There is a meeting to discuss our ordering this afternoon. I have a lot of thoughts about this right now.

Something I am thinking about is the categories of fiction that we order. We order inspirational fiction which is mainly christian but can include other religions, African American fiction, urban fiction, mystery and suspense, romance, science fiction and fantasy (horror is an orphan it can appear either in fantasy or general fiction), general fiction, and short stories. In general fiction it covers a wide variety of subjects including award winning fiction, small press fiction, world literature (we get requests for fiction from India, China, the Caribbean, Brazil, South America, and Africa), chick lit, and other material.

Generally each genre of fiction has a way of tracking bestsellers and award winning books. For example, in African American fiction, there is the Ebony bestseller list and the BCALA -- Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award and the African American Literary Awards. In science fiction, there is the Locus Magazine bestseller list and the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Every fiction genre usually has a bestseller list and some awards attached to it.

Hopefully, I should get a general set of statistics from the system soon. I am hoping I can dismantle this into something which we can use. It might take me a little while to do this. I like to know which authors, call numbers, genres, and formats generate which amount of circulation. In other words, I want to know what people want. This make it more likely we will get the right material.