by Joe Miller,
Director of Development
I mentioned last week that over the last year, Pocahontas County Library patrons checked out somewhere north of 77,000 print items. We spend a lot of time helping you find things in our existing collections.
That could mean helping you find items on our shelves. Or helping set you up on Libby, where you can access electronic books, mu-sic and movies. Or it could mean getting access to items at other libraries through interlibrary loan, a program that allows us to borrow books on your behalf from any library in the state.
But we also devote a good bit of time to ensuring that you have a steady supply of new things to check out.
Of course, there are lots of books, magazines and mo-vies out there, and we have limited space. So we put a lot of care into selecting new items.
Luckily, we have a lot of tools for helping us make good choices.
The first one is easy. We know our patrons—which means that we know lots of you read particular authors regularly. So when James Patterson or Stephen King or Patricia Cornwell publishes a new novel, we just go ahead and buy at least one copy. For really popular books, we may order a copy at multiple branches.
We do something similar for ordering movies and TV shows. We order big hits as soon as they’re released on DVD.
Patron requests are also a big source of new acquisitions.
If you want an item and we don’t have it in our system, we’ll often just order a copy, then let you know when it comes in.
Beyond requests and bestsellers, we start looking at data.
Because we have limited shelf space and limited budgets, we try not to order too many copies of any given book. That means sometimes you may have to wait for the item you want. We do this by placing a hold on the item you want.
We review lists of holds regularly. If the waiting list starts to get really long, we order some additional copies.
Beyond specific authors, we also know the kinds of books that people like. For example, several patrons at our Linwood branch really enjoy reading biographies. So we may look at lists of best-selling biographies and order items that seem similar to those our patrons have enjoyed in the past.
Similarly, we look at reviews of books from newer authors. If we see something new getting lots of reviews that say things like “David Baldacci meets Agatha Christie,” we’ll probably order it, as that sounds like a thing lots of our patrons will enjoy.
Neighboring counties are also good sources of information. Patrons at Pocahontas County Libraries often read the same kinds of books that patrons in Greenbrier or Summers County enjoy. So we regularly look at new book lists from nearby counties for ideas to supplement our collection.
E-books work a little differently. Libraries don’t own e-books—they license each copy of an e-book, usually for a period of 12 or 24 months. A license allows a library to offer the e-book to a single patron at a time.
E-books are convenient and popular. But the pricing model makes them more expensive than physical books. A 12-month license costs about as much as a physical book, but the physical book doesn’t disappear after 12 months.
Because of the pricing, we try to be especially data-driven about e-book purchases. Generally this means checking to see when a lot of our patrons are waiting on a given book and purchasing extra licenses.
Adult fiction is our most popular category, but it’s not the only thing we keep around. I mentioned biographies already. Many of you are also into history. Still others use the library to deepen their understanding of their religion. And plenty of folks come by looking for genealogical information.
Our librarians regularly comb through our nonfiction collections to identify gaps in coverage and to weed out material that might be out-of-date. (For example, no one in 2024 will get much use out of a guide to Windows 95). As we weed out books, we replace them with more up-to-date items.
Finally, we do get some of our material via donation from people in our community. Donations may not always make it directly to the shelves.
Library books get more wear-and-tear than those in individual homes, so books need to be pretty sturdy to enter the lending shelves. (Most of the books we order new have a special library binding to help them hold up to near-constant handling!)
But fear not! Donated items that physically won’t hold up to regular lending—or those that duplicate items already in our collection—end up in one of two places.
Most of our branches have an honor shelf. You don’t need to check these items out. Just take them home, read them, and return them at your convenience. Some of our donated books end up on the honor shelves.
Other donations become part of our occasional book sales. Your donated books find great new homes and we use the funds to help supplement our collections and improve our facilities.
Basically, there’s a lot that goes into expanding our collections.
You can follow us on Facebook, where we regularly post about new additions. Or you can stop by your local branch and check out the new arrivals section.
