Every week for my Collection Development class, we read several articles and answer a question. This week’s question encapsulated the issue I have been struggling with every week (and indeed before that, when it became apparent last year during my studies): What role should the librarian play in the selection process: respond to community demands or ensure access to the broadest choice of materials regardless of demand? The reason I struggle with it is that there are conflicting messages: we are supposed to weed meticulously and satisfy user demand, but we are also supposed to be bastions of culture and not allow small presses and cultural representations to slip through our grasp and disappear from the world. I also have a problem with academics who subscribe to the idea that there is no universal truth, yet there is, according to them, some universally-acknowledged canon of literature that adheres to some objective, higher aesthetic.
I’m posting my answer without much explanation, so you may want to read the articles to fully understand where I’m coming from. Oh, and unlike the rest of the cite, I use APA style here.
This question encapsulates the issue I have been struggling with for several weeks. I think that Nora Rawlinson (1981), the author of the infamous “Give ‘Em What They Want,” would be surprised by the dichotomy of collection purposes that has been spawned since her experience in Baltimore County. Rawlinson repeatedly emphasized that her libraries were not stuffed with only bestsellers, nor was that her purpose in giving her patrons what they wanted. She was following a perfectly logical plan of investigating what her patrons liked to read and collecting accordingly—it neither meant collecting fewer classics/literature nor that those were checked out less. Murray C. Bob’s invective against her was highly unwarranted; he even willfully misunderstood her by insisting she said she had thought of something new when she expressly said the idea had been around almost a hundred years (Rawlinson, p. 2190).
Rawlinson had the right idea of the “balancing act” that our own textbook talks about between “quality and popularity” (Patrick Jones, qtd. in Evans & Saponaro, 2005, p. 69). I don’t agree with her use of circulation to determine popularity, but I wonder if she learned more over the years that circulation is not the only or best determinant of library worth. That, though, plus the excitement to stock popular genre fiction, appear to be the lasting, negative consequences of her ideas.
But what of my own philosophy? Have I come to any satisfying conclusion over this issue? Last week in class, one of my colleagues suggested that we should make a point of collecting in specialized areas (small publishers, etc) when our constituency applies—if we have poets or Hispanics, we should be dutiful in seeking out all types of resources on those subjects. But if we have architects, there is no reason to entirely flesh out the poetry section (though a little piece of me dies to say that). We may think we all have that special knowledge that John Berry alluded to, but these days we have additional kinds of special knowledge—that we live in a fan culture, an individual culture, and a customer-centric culture. Most of the articles referenced the fact that reviews can be biased and undeservedly positive—so take note of that and move on. Serebnick noted that just because a publisher is small doesn’t mean its output is inherently better than that of a mass publisher—a key fact in understanding this issue (1992, p. 274). And yes, Bob, “tastes are easily manipulated,” (1982, p. 1707), but the fact remains that they are tastes. They exist. I don’t agree with your decision to read Nora Roberts, nor do I agree with anyone’s decision to allow her near a keyboard, let alone unleash her words into the public sphere, but I will defend for a pretty long time (but not until death) your right to read and enjoy her. Will I also suggest another title, a bit more of what the Western intelligentsia consider worthy? Will I also collect, along the sidelines, materials that feed the mind as well as the pleasure center, placing them on display, creating activities around them? Will I give you what you want and what you didn’t know you could want?
YES.
“If it rarely but regularly moves, then there is a need that has been met” (Sullivan, 2004, p. 46).
Works Cited
Evans, G. E., & Saponaro, M. Z. (2005). Developing library and information center collections (5th ed.). Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited.
Orkiszewski, Paul (2005). A comparative study of Amazon.com as a library book and media vendor. Library Resources & Technical Services 49 (3): 204-209.
Rawlinson, N. (1981). Give ‘em what they want. Library Journal, 6(November 15, 1981), 2189-2190. & Bob, Murray C. (1982). The case for quality book selection. Library Journal, 107 (September 15, 1982), 1707-1710.
Serebnick, J. (1992). Selection and holdings of small publishers’ books in OCLC libraries: A study of the influence of reviews, publishers, and vendors. Library Quarterly, 62, 259-294.
Sullivan, Kathleen (2004). “Beyond cookie-cutter selection.” Library Journal, Jun 15. Vol. 129, Iss. 11; p. 44 (3 pages).
This would be another good one to start with, and if your library wants to collect only a few Bollywood movies, it should definitely include Sholay and Mother India. Again, as far as I remember, there are no “stereotypical” Bollywood moves here. There is violence towards females, which is accepted and tossed off—a surprise to our American-trained sensibilities (later posts will address violence towards females).
