Have you ever had one of those mornings where you look at the clock and somehow hours have flown by and you’re not exactly sure how that could be possible? That’s how this morning was. I know I did the usual morning routine of email/Friendfeed/Twitter/etc. And I remember giving my boss my order of books from the Stuttering Foundation (they donate their materials to libraries. yay free books!). Then we had a discussion about getting contacted by authors who want their books in the library, and how… interesting that can be. Conversation spurred me to look at the bunch of emails I had on this very topic and decide what to do with them (yes to some, no to another). I know I did some other stuff… and took a walk outside in the glorious heat and humidity… the details, they escape me.
Went through this month’s First Look cart (selection of forthcoming books) from Baker & Taylor and added ones that sound interesting to my “to be ordered at some point” carts. Publishers love their fall biographies! oy.
After lunch, my afternoon was spent reviewing patron requests. As I mentioned before, I get a lot of patron requests in my areas. Have I mentioned what areas I have? no? oh, well let’s get that out of the way. We divide it up by Dewey Decimal Number:
200’s – Religion
600’s – Official category is Technology, I believe, but it covers a wide variety of areas – health/medicine, transportation, gardening, pets, cooking, sewing, parenting, business, construction… I could go on for pages.
900’s – Geography and History
Biographies – I think this one is self-explanatory 🙂
(for the library geeks, I will have the 700’s within the next month or so, and probably the 500’s soon also. adult nonfiction will be mine!)
Anyhoo, my process for reviewing patron requests for books isn’t necessarily that different from what I do for books that are up for weeding. Some are easy to figure out – like if it’s a book by a popular author. For the rest, it’s a mix of criteria: checking Worldcat to see what other libraries own it, reading reviews (if there are any), seeing what else we have on that subject, cost, how much use I think it will get with the majority of our patrons. Then once I have decided I am going to purchase something, I have to figure out how many copies to order and (for now, at least) what branch(es) they will start at. Once I’ve done that, I send the orders off to our wonderful Acquisitions department, who gets everything ordered and the books magically appear here later.
Time for some email and web stuff before I leave for the day. Now I am heading off into the heat to yoga class. which may end up being a bikram yoga class tonight. O_o