Week 5 Prompt: Book Reviews & Collection Development

"Different publications review different types of books and they allow different types of conversations. For example, Booklist will not publish negative reviews, while, as you have all seen, Kirkus has no problems with it. 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 (formally Romantic Times) or other genre heavy publications." ~ Erin Cataldi

How does this affect collection development?

I believe that this heavily affects collection development. I know that selectors in the system I work for look to many of the top publications to help in building the collection. I am responsible for the purchasing of juvenile paperbacks at my location, but I also tend to use reviews from top sources to pick out new paperbacks.

E-Book Only Romantic Suspense Review

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

     Both the Amazon review and blog review are valid because they were written by people who actually read the book. I am not sure how reliable these reviews are because I do not know who these people are or what these people do. I would be more willing to trust an author, editor, librarian, or someone else in the book industry. I would need to read several more reviews in order to determine whether or not to purchase this book. While this book is romantic, I am not sure that I can say from the reviews that the book is a romantic suspense. The Amazon reviewer even mentioned the book made her very emotional which is not very suspenseful.

Angela's Ashes Reviews

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

     The reviews of Angela's Ashes make me feel that I would probably by this book for my collection. First, the reviews are from more reputable sources (Kirkus Review, Library Journal, Booklist). Second, they all tend to say some of the same things about the book (tragic, sad, but humorous). Finally, who does not want to read a tragic, yet uplifting humorous story?

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?

     It does not seem fair that one type of book is reviewed more than other types of books. I would hope that there are companies, librarians, and others in the book industry looking to solve this problem. We definitely need to be looking at books in all formats and all genres when reviewing them. Further we should be looking for lesser known authors when we look for books to review. However, I do realize that better known authors and books with better storylines get reviewed more and that is probably to be expected. I think it is harder to write a bad review. Which, may be why we do not see many bad reviews.

     As mentioned previously, librarians tend to look more closely at books that are in more reputable review magazines and sites. Therefore, books that are more likely to get reviewed through those reputable resources are more likely to be chosen for a library's collection.

     I think that it is appropriate that libraries use reputable review resource to make decisions for most of their collection. However, I think it is also up to libraries to do research and find other sources of reputable reviews for those books and formats that are underrepresented.

     I only make decisions about buy juvenile paperbacks for my library. I typically order materials that are popular amongst my patrons. I use reviews through our vendor to decide on other materials. I tend to read reviews for titles or authors that I am unfamiliar with in order to decide if I want to give a book a chance. I like reviews that are shorter and give me the gist of the plot.

    Overall reviews from reputable resources are great to scour for helping to develop a collection, but libraries really should be digging deep to find reviews that will help them build the most diverse collection.