- Bestseller Lists: Not As Straightforward As They Seem
Posted January 18, 2005
For one thing, a bestseller in New York might not be one in Atlanta. A
recent newspaper article examines how bestseller lists are compiled, and
reports how a software product that tracks bookstore sales may create a
profound shift in which lists readers may be consulting in the future.
Read the story.
- Nick Hornby Feels Your Pain
Posted January 27, 2005
Although it's the ocean of temptation available in bookstores rather than
in libraries that often overwhelms him, commentator Nick Hornby has written
down his musings on the so-many-books-so-little-time dilemma faced by
book-loving library users. Read the Boston Globe
review of Hornby’s book and see if you’re not tempted to
order a copy for your library's avid readers (including any library
employees who might fall into that category).
- A Da Vinci Code Readalikes List
Posted March 15, 2005
Staff at the Seattle
Public Library have put together a list of novels that readers who
loved Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and his previous books might enjoy while
waiting for Brown’s next blockbuster. SPL’s
booklist includes “fast-paced puzzling [we think they may have meant
“puzzle”] thrillers with intriguing details from the worlds of art,
religion, politics, science and the occult." AFPL selectors may want to
check your library’s shelves to make sure you have some or all of these
titles.
Incidentally, why doesn’t AFPL’s web site include helpful booklists
like this one? Don’t Atlanta’s readers deserve them as much as Seattle’s do?
And it's not like Seattle is doing anything unique here: similar Da Vinci
Code readalike lists are posted on the web sites of dozens of public
libraries, including (to take a few random examples in the United States)
the libraries serving the readers of towns in
Massachusetts,
California,
Wisconsin,
Ohio, and
Rhode Island.
(Many of these lists are variations on the one created way back in September 2003 by Fiction-L, the fab NoveList-like
listserv based at the Morton Grove Public Library in Illinois.)
If the public library in the tiny hamlet of
LeRoy, New York can manage to post such a list to its web site, why can't AFPL?
(Of course, doing that or anything else involving the library's web site might be a bit cumbersome, since
AFPL's webmaster works down at county headquaters these days instead of at the library and no AFPL
employee has ever laid eyes on the guy.)
- Bargain-Hunting for Books Gets Easier
Posted April 15, 2005
Next time you have to tell a library patron that AFPL doesn't own the
book that patron was hoping to find, you might steer them toward the
Internet if they'd prefer to buy the thing instead of waiting for AFPL to
obtain it for them via Interlibrary Loan.
BookPrice.com compares book prices at almost three dozen (!) online book vendors in a single
chart. Some of the prices quoted are amazingly cheap.
Wouldn't it be nice if AFPL's Powers That Be figured out a way to authorize its Interlibrary Loan
people to purchase books from this site - and figured out how to get these purchases quickly cataloged
and processed? Or is that sort of thing just too "21st-century" for AFPL?
- Library Book Sale Prices vs. Used Bookstore Prices
Posted May 4, 2005
From LISNews.com comes some good news for book bargain-hunters:
"[Blogger] Rich Burridge compares what he paid for books at his local library's book sale with what
the same books would've cost him through Amazon (used and new).
The library book sale wins."
[Warning: Due to some sort of Internet glitch, you'll need to scroll down
quite a bit from the beginning of Burridge's post to see his comparison
chart and his comments about it.]
Incidentally, a link embedded in Burridge's post will take you to a nifty
(and searchable by city and state) web site called
"Book Sale Finder: The Online Guide to Used Book Events", which lists
several Friends'ongoing book sales at AFPL libraries.
- Web-Based Software that Tracks Your Library Transactions
Posted June 27, 2005
One thing needed by heavy-duty library users - people with library
privileges at more than one library system and/or people in households with
multiple library cards - is a way to consoldiate the information on all
their library accounts and to provide email alerts of upcoming due
dates so borrowers can avoid those annoying overdue fines.
Amazingly, few library circulation systems offer these two user-friendly
services. Most libraries are still forcing people to tediously log in to their
households' accounts one at at time, and most libraries don't alert patrons
that their materials are on the verge of becoming overdue - meaning, in most
cases, that patrons aren't contacted until it's too late for them to avoid their overdue fines.
Into this embarrassing breach steps the marketplace. Although currently
available only to libraries (like Dekalb County and Gwinnett County) who
use Dynix circ systems, the company that invented what it calls ELF has
plans for making its product work with other circ systems as well. (The
day that ELF software works with SIRSI-based systems may not be far off,
considering SIRSI's recent merger with Dynix.)
A cursory glance at the demo at the ELF
web site looks pretty nifty - the software also tracks Patron Holds as
well as due dates on multiple cards.
One thing ELF doesn't do is something else some library patrons have long
been asking for: a running list of everything they've ever borrowed from
the moment they received their library card.
- "The Best Five Books Ever Written"
Posted June 29, 2005
Will Manley, in his column for the June 2005 issue of Booklist
(page 1715), has written one of the clearest explanations we’ve ever seen
on the pitfalls of compiling a “best books” list. Having done that, he
reluctantly offers up (based on reader suggestions) his list of “the five
[fiction] books we must all read before we die.” His choices will surprise
many librarians.
- Important Authors Lost in Translation?
Posted June 30, 2005
The Booker Prize this year was awarded to Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare.
The fact that many English-speaking readers had never heard of Kadare led
the UK’s Guardian to poll some international literature experts for
a list of ten other not-so-well-known authors whose books in English
translation they think English-speaking readers should be aware of.
Read the Guardian article.
Curious, we did a quick AFPL catalog search of the authors identified by
the Guardian's experts and found that AFPL owns
- 8 books written by Spain’s Juan Goytisolo
- 7 books written by German author Stefan Heym
- 7 books written by Dutch author Cees Nooteboom
- 6 books written by Icelander Halldor Laxness
- 4 books written by Danish author Harry Mulisch
- 3 books written by French author Marie Darrieussecq
- 2 books written by Morroco-born Marcel Benabou
- 2 books written by Estonian author Jaan Kross
- 1 book written by Chinese author Shen Congwen
- 0 books written by Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic
Not too tawdry, considering how these guys (and the sole female author)
cited by the Guardian’s experts are hardly household words in Atlanta. On
the other hand, someone at AFPL probably needs to order Kadare’s
prize-winning book, as it is not currently in any AFPL collection.
- Book(mark)lover's Alert
Posted July 11, 2005
Everyone knows that some library lovers are also book collectors, but
who knew that there are also People Out There who collect bookmarks?
Here's a
Switzerland-based (but English-language) website that features items from
a bookmark-maker's collection of vintage bookmarks, plus a list of people
from all over the world interested in trading bookmarks with other
collectors.
- Wanna Get Rid of All Those Paperbacks? Wanna Get Some More?
Posted July 11, 2005
For library users who don't routinely donate their paperbacks to ye
local branch library, a guy in Atlanta has started
a paperback book-swapping site. The site is pretty self-explanatory,
but there's an interesting article about the site
here.
- Potter-like Books Booklist Available
Posted August 25, 2005
Many booklovers needed a read-alike list for The Da Vinci Code;
some of the Potter People would probably appreciate a similar list.
Back in June, ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children published a list of Harry
Potter read-alikes, and
here it is for those of us who didn’t know it was available.
- The Liberating Secrets Found on Library Shelves
Posted August 25, 2005
Recently, California-based librarian Michael McGrorty, on his blog entitled
"Library Dust," posted a tribute to the way public libraries offer an
alternative to what students are taught in school about the history of the
United States. The essay is a powerful statement about how the mere
existence of thoughtfully-stocked libraries can transform a person’s
education.
Read Michael’s essay.
- Fantasy Genre Web Database Now Available
Posted September 22, 2005
United Kingdom-based Internet guru and blogger Phil Bradley has brought to
our attention the establishment of a new Internet resource, the
Internet Speculative Fiction Database, which apparently aims to be the
omnium gatherum of online information about fantasy fiction and its
authors.
- “Maps” of Author Write-Alikes?
Posted September 30, 2005
We’ve never seen lists of authors lists formatted quite
this way. Some of the tests we ran on the site produced some pretty
odd results, but it’s undeniably fun to play around with these so-called
"maps." See what you think: type into the site’s search box the name of
one of your own personal favorite authors and see what happens.
Our thanks to blogger “Jane’s”
“A Wandering Eyre” for the tip; she saw it on Steven Cohen’s
”Library Stuff”.)
- Another Source of Online Book Reviews Available
Posted October 19, 2005
Time Magazine has picked an online book review website,
The Compete Review, as one of its “50 Coolest Arts & Entertainment
Websites for 2005.” Review-reading booklovers may want to poke around this
site, which is searchable by subject, and consider adding it to their
“Internet Favorites.”
- Time Magazine Picks 100 Best Novels
Posted October 18, 2005
AFPL selectors may want to print out and check against their
collections
Time's list of the most important novels published since
Time itself came on the scene in 1923. (That silly cutoff date means
this is one Greats list that will not include James Joyce's Ulysses.)
Also of interest is the link provided that explains how the list was compiled.
- Website for Library-Loving Mystery Readers
Posted November 3, 2005
Librarian blogger Phil Bradley
recently alerted the blogosphere to
Bibliomysteries, which lists mystery novels that contain “settings,
plots, or substantial characters...related to the world of books, writers,
archives and libraries.”
This is a handy resource not only for library-loving mystery readers, but
librarians who might want to create a book display based on this theme.
- Dept. of Bestseller Surprises
Posted December 2, 2005
“And the award for Bestselling Fiction Genre goes..." ...…not to mysteries,
as most librarians and booklovers might think, but to romance novels, which, according to
a report in the November 21, 2005 issue of Publishers Weekly (page
18), accounted for nearly 55% (!) of paperback fiction sold in 2004.
- Why Booklovers Should Give Away Their Books BEFORE They Croak
Posted December 14, 2005
Excerpt from a footnote to
a recent blog entry by the always-thoughtful “Library Dust” (written by
the always-articulate Michael McGrorty):
"You not only can’t take [your fabulous collection of favorite books] with
you, but your relations will likely offer the whole to some imbecile who
will like as not deposit the books in a landfill when they can’t be sold
profitably. That, or they’ll end up in the hands of the folks who buy
hard-bound volumes by the shelf, as raw material for chic wall coverings.
Interior decorators cut the spines off the books, gluing them to wallboard
to create a sort of library effect."
True enough. And if all else fails, one can donate them to the nearest
public library, which, given the theft rate in same, will surely need a
few titles from among the ones you deposit there. In fact, why wait for
your inevitable decrepitude and/or demise? We suggest that you make
weeding that personal library of carefully-chosen (or not-so-carefully-chosen)
books of yours #1 on your list of New Year’s Resolutions....
Booklover Alerts Posted in 2004
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