Up for Discussion: Expedient, But at What Cost?

You have a lot to do. For public librarians that can mean conducting class visits; creating, promoting, and executing programs; working on public service desks; and, of course, developing your collection. School librarians might spend the bulk of their day teaching—with plenty of other work still to do in the media center, including collection development. You can’t do it all, but you’ve discovered a service that promises to help. Your acquisition vendor has a collection development database (Baker and Taylor’s Title Source, Follett’s Titlewave, Ingram’s ipage, or one of several others) that provides extensive search capabilities, access to review content, and one-click book ordering that eliminates the need to comb journals for reviews as well as the hours searching through the Children’s Core Collection (H.W. Wilson).

Many of these databases allow you to limit your searching to titles that have been reviewed in one or more professional journals, which streamlines not only your book ordering but also your review reading. Now you don’t have to scan reviews of books you don’t need! In fact, you don’t have to read reviews at all; instead, you can select your library’s material from the “core collection” lists created by the vendors.

I won’t argue with you: today’s wholesalers and vendors offer valuable services for librarians. Their products can provide a great starting point to building a collection, introduce us to titles we might never encounter, have up-to-date information, and save us time and money. However, the wholesaler’s database, which would seem to reproduce all the investigative work that goes into collection development, needs to be approached with caution.

Although their organization, access points, and bibliographic suggestions give them the “look and feel” of valid collection development tools, these products can’t be confused with primary and professional selection tools. Relying on vendor databases, topical bibliographies, and core collection catalogs—to the exclusion of other resources—cannot be considered a best practice. In a 1997 editorial for this magazine, then editor Lillian N. Gerhardt reminded librarians of what she called a “time tested” tenet of collection development resource selection: “librarians should not put any faith in the book evaluations or selection guidance of the people who profit from book sales.” Gerhardt’s words remain relevant over a decade later.

Am I suggesting that librarians disregard vendor these vendor products? Not at all. But librarians do need to approach them critically—and below I suggest ways to do so—as well as ways to augment these products with additional resources.

Nearly all of the major wholesalers and vendors advertise the lists of recommended books created by their staff librarians as value-added benefits of using their collection development databases. These bibliographies may be organized by age, reading level, language, or topic and highlight material in popular formats, titles related to current events, or books of high interest.

Yes, these lists can be very useful as starting places in the search for books, but one problem is that the evaluative criteria the creators use to select titles may be absent, unclear, or even erroneous. For example, a core bibliography from a leading vendor—and touted as including books not published in series and that have been starred, reviewed positively, or are classics or award winners—includes books linked to lackluster reviews while other suggestions are clearly parts of established publisher series. Still other vendors provide lists of books compiled by their staff librarians, but then don’t even bother to include their selection criteria. Without clear statements of criteria, it is nearly impossible to consider these lists critically.

Granted, the creators of vendor-produced bibliographies rely on many of the same resources that librarians in the field consult when making collection decisions: reviews, author and publisher history, and reputation. However, two other sources of information may further influence their choices: publishers’ tip sheets and inventory records.

Tip sheets are marketing materials meant to advertise a book or series and may feature excerpts, a summary, and other promotional content. They’re marketing tools and are not objective sources of information about a book. But details about a title’s print run, advertising budget, and promotional plans can be used to predict its popularity and might influence a wholesaler to stock more copies of the title.

For example, to secure a competitive share of an in-demand product, wholesalers will naturally stock more of a title that has been printed in higher number. That’s just good business. When wholesalers stock material based on the perceived strength of a book’s promotional plan and not its critical reception, this is when we enter the area of speculation. And this is where a wholesaler’s inventory information becomes important.

Wholesalers stock their warehouses in anticipation of customer book orders. While wholesalers might feel comfortable buying and stocking a large number of novels by Stephenie Meyer or J.K. Rowling, they are typically reluctant to stock as many copies of less popular titles and series. Because a revolving inventory generates the most profit, wholesalers are eager to sell the items in their warehouses and may well promote items in stock more heavily than other titles. This means that wholesalers may attempt to load the dice by promoting material they bet on, based on a publisher’s promised promotional plan. This inventory promotion can work in the library’s favor—as when a library takes a chance on a book that’s being heavily promoted by a publisher and wholesaler and that book does, indeed, end up topping the best-seller lists. But it also represents a wholesalers’ attempt to ensure the items it bought in bulk will be purchased in equal numbers.

To make matters more bewildering, vendors produce an array of materials. As mentioned, some guides and core catalogs are produced by librarians on staff and do an excellent job of presenting well-reviewed, award-winning, contemporary titles. But vendors also circulate catalogs of material for promotional purposes and charge publishers to place advertisements and eye-catching annotations in these publications. Other materials are produced with input from the companies’ collection development librarians and with people in marketing. You don’t need to dismiss material in this latter category out-of-hand—they are often an excellent source of popular material, such as media tie-ins, that you won’t find in most professional review sources. However, it’s important to know which department has produced the publication (librarian, marketing, or both) and consider the recommendation accordingly.

Vendor collection development tools and databases are great helps. However, as we rely on these resources to aid in our collection development processes, we need to practice the information literacy lessons we preach and proceed with consideration. As with all collection development resources, consider the authority and potential biases of these tools as we integrate them into our collection-building practice.

To ensure that our library collections are created for our unique communities we must remain current with our professional reading and actively seek out material from a range of resources, including smaller and independent press catalogs (many of which have “backlist” contracts with the larger wholesaler networks) to ensure that these valuable—but less visible—works get the attention they deserve. The characteristics, demographics, interests, and needs of your community or school should help direct the resources you turn to in creating collections.

Furthermore, we should expand our focused collection development projects to include subject-area bibliographies from organizations and compilers outside of the profession. For example, while Science Books and Films might be a go-to professional resource for developing science and technology collections, the National Science Teachers’ Association also compiles an annual list of recommended science trade books. Other professional subject-area teaching organizations, like the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), grant annual awards to notable nonfiction as well. The NCSS cooperates with the Children’s Book Council to produce its annual list of Notable Tradebooks in the social studies, while the NCTE grants its Orbis Pictus Award for outstanding nonfiction at the NCTE’s annual national convention.

And, of course, we should ask the young patrons and students we serve what they want to see in the library. After all, why should we have all the fun?