Week 5 Prompt

Ebook only books, which are increasingly popular (especially in the romance genre) see little to no reviews in professional publications unless they have a big name author, and then still it’s usually only RT Reviews or other genre heavy publications. How does this affect collection development?

I do some collection development for my library science fiction collections and sometimes have hard times find reviews for items and if we didn’t use carts that were mostly picked out for us by our vendors I would problem miss some books. Reviews help me find what other people thought about the book and if it is worth spending the money to get the book for our collections. With some many self-published books that are Ebook only books, it is hard to know if the book is worth buying when it comes out if there are no reviews for it. Review help buyer narrow down what they want to spend the little budget they have, so without a review it is sometimes hard for buyers to pick up an unknown authors book even if it is great.

Look over the reviews- do you feel they are both reliable? How likely would you be to buy this book for your library?

Looking at the reviews they both look like they are from someone who read and enjoyed the book. I feel I would want to see more reviews on this book to make a decision of whether or not I would want to buy it. I do feel that this review are important because they are customer review. This gives the buyer a look at what a patron might think about this book, not just other librarians or professional reviewer because sometimes what we as librarians like is not always what the patron might want.

How do these reviews make you feel about the possibility of adding Angela’s Ashes to your collection?

I have read “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt and I found it to be a good book about a hard subject. Each of these reviews shows how hard McCourt life is and give you just enough that you want to read it to find out more. For example, in the review from Booklist Review, they state “McCourt spares us no details: the stench of the one toilet shared by an entire street, the insults of the charity officers, the marauding rats, the street fights, the infected eyes, the fleas in the mattress… Yet he found a way to love in the miserable Limerick, and it is love one remembers as the dominant flavor in this Irish stew.” When you look at all these reviews they tell you that this story is going to be heartbreaking but give hope that you can survivor something this horrible. This would be a book that I would recommend buying for any library. Library Journal Review state in the last line that it is “a wonderful book; strongly recommended for readers of any age.

Do you think it’s fair that one type of book is reviewed to death and other types of books get little to no coverage? How does this affect a library’s collection? And how do you feel about review sources that won’t print negative content? Do you think that’s appropriate? If you buy for your library, how often do you use reviews to make your decisions? If not, how do you feel about reviews for personal reading, and what are some of your favorite review sources?

I find it sad that most books that are reviewed to death are the authors that everyone is already reading. For example, James Patterson has hundreds of books published and I am sure more than half of them have 2 or more reviews. By now this is an author that most people know if they haven’t read anything by him and at this point if they haven’t a review is probably not going to get someone to.  The ones that need to be getting more reviews are the up and coming authors who are putting out their first books. These authors are the one people want to know about otherwise it hard for buyers to pick up titles that they haven’t heard anything about. This affects library’s collection because you end up getting a lot more book from James Patterson then from lesser known or a new author who may have better stories and not just the formal writing. Not that they are anything wrong with this still I read several of James Patterson series but I know they are better books out there that are not being looked at. I feel negative review help us avoid some of the books that patron might not like. But as Laura Miller says in her article titled “8 Books I Bailed on in 2013” ‘underlines the truth that there is no cultural product that everyone likes’. I like to look at the Kirkus reviews to see the section called “our critics’ takes on this week’s bestsellers.” This is an interest section where they suggest whether you should ‘buy,’ ‘borrow,’ or ‘skip’. I have disagreed with this section may time for example the reviewer of “Artemis” by Andy Weir really didn’t care for the book but I enjoyed the book when I read it. Sometimes I think when I see a negative review it makes me want to read the book to find out what I think about the book and whether or not I agreed with the reviewer. Like I talked about above I am currently buying books for the science fiction section at my library and I try to use book review when I can find them but this is another section that doesn’t get as many reviews or if they do it is after I have already had to pick which books I am getting. When we are selecting books we are looking at books that will be out in 3 to 5 month and I have trouble finding reviews for some of the books. If it is an author that we have other books from I look at the circulation data that we have and sometimes reviews for the other books that they have written. I do the best I can to try and find items that I feel patron that read science fiction will want.

Miller, Laura. “8 Books I Bailed on in 2013.” Salon. 01 Jan. 2014. https://www.salon.com/2014/01/01/8_books_i_bailed_on_in_2013/.