Prompt Response - Reviews

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. How does this affect collection development?

If a book truly is e-book only, that would effectively eliminate several audiences for a book. When I think of some of the patrons at my branch, there are a couple of regular readers of romance novels who come to mind. They are older and do not have (or wish to have) an e-book reader of any kind. Likewise, I would ask about whether audiobook versions of the books would ever be created for these works. The other side of e-book only works is a technical one. There would need to be a mechanism for distributing the e-book along with the library’s other e-books. It is likely this would not be a problem, but if the publisher is a smaller one, that might not be the case.  Curiously, in an e-book environment, the books that are e-book only won’t be distinguishable from the other books. In online ordering sites noticing the format of a book takes effort, and over time the distinction in the book review sites may become minimal.

A similar distinction already exists in the library: some series are published directly to paperback. This would include Executioner, Star Wars, and Harlequin books, for example. For any of these a big name review for book #27 in a particular series would be surprising. Frequently in my system, these books are purchased as unprocessed paperbacks. Then (since the computer doesn’t know they exist) they disappear into the stacks.  Partly this is due to their status as a paperback-only series, and the lack of reviews may contribute to their being unprocessed paperbacks.

One is two reviews of an ebook only romantic suspense novel, one from a blog and one from amazon. Look over the reviews - do you feel they are both reliable? Do they follow the guidelines Erin talked about in her presentation? How likely would you be to buy this book for your library?

Both are short, and without reading the books it is difficult to judge if they give anything away. However, the blog mentions “Elise and Noel find passion in each others [sic] arms.” That might be giving too much away. Neither gives a sample from the book. While the Amazon review is clearer, both seem to say about the same things when boiled down to basics. As to whether or not to buy it – I have no earthly idea. These two reviews represent about my entire connection to the romantic suspense genre. However, I did learn that I would be unlikely to buy it for myself. After readings these reviews, I would be looking for “Large library romantic suspense package #1” when doing my ordering of romantic suspense novels. (I’m not looking for a position in purchasing any time soon.)

The other document contains some reviews of Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt, an incredibly popular memoir…. How do these reviews make you feel about the possibility of adding Angela's Ashes to your collection?

The first review did little. It was the combined review, and it was too long and for some reason the three books which were reviewed kept getting jumbled in my mind. That particular review was unhelpful.

I suspect that the book is already there. If I were in a purchasing position, I’d probably feel like the library would be obligated to buy a copy or five (for our twenty-three branches). I would further suspect that the book would see little circulation at my particular branch unless it was chosen for the book club.

Further, this another category of book that I do not read. The closest thing I have had read would be The Grapes of Wrath during US History in high school -- and that is not even a memoir. I would have little background to judge the contents of the reviews, other than that they say nice things about the book.

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?  

It is perhaps something that collection developers should keep well in mind. The review magazines are a business and will include reviews that their readership likes to read. That may or may not include the totality of what their readership may need to read to be fully informed collection developers. The other side to this is that it appears that some books are reviewed in comparison to some narrow ideal of a quality book. So, books like science fiction books seem to be picked and described in terms of their broader appeal and adherence to the standard of that ideal book. My preference would be that genre fiction like science fiction be reviewed as a work in that genre.

In a related note, there are only certain types of books that win awards. I tend to avoid books that receive certain awards, and I am suspicious of books that are universally well reviewed.

And how do you feel about review sources that won't print negative content? Do you think that's appropriate?

After thinking about this, it occurred to me that librarians do actually need to be able to say nice things about books that they know they would never willingly read. In that context, reviews which bring out the positive points of books (while perhaps leaving out some of the negative aspects) would line up with how books would sometimes need to be described to patrons. Also, the reviews may give some sort of advance warning of what is coming. However, it seems that the simpler way to create a magazine of positive reviews would be to ask publishers to submit the descriptions they provide. The service the magazine would provide would be nearly identical. It would be biased information, but if the reviews are uniformly positive, then the reviews are biased at present. Further, if the purpose is to inform readers on the content of the books, bias may play little part in the use of the material. To the extent that the reviews will be used to make determinations involving the quality of a work, a warning label should probably be put on the front cover noting that the reviews are all positive. Moreover, I suspect that while the reviews of some magazines may only say positive things, the silences may speak volumes to regular readers of the reviews.

If you buy for your library, how often do you use reviews to make your decisions?

I do not buy for the library other than toner and staples and such. At my branch the librarians do have an opportunity to buy books; however, the librarians at the branches are limited to selecting unprocessed paperbacks. They do look through reviews when making their selections. I suspect that I will look first to metrics of how popular the hardback versions of books were in the previous year, but that is just a guess. (If a math teacher and computer professional is put in a purchasing position, one would expect that computer reports full of numbers would be an important purchasing guide.)

If not, how do you feel about reviews for personal reading, and what are some of your favorite review sources?

Only recently have I started looking at GoodReads or LibaryThing. Other than that I generally do not read reviews. My branch receives Kirkus, Library Journal and School Library Journal, but they are held at the librarian’s desk. This week was the first time that I had really looked at Kirkus, and I have only flipped through the other journals on occasion. I do not seeing myself using the reviews in the magazines, but I will occasionally read the reviews (professional and otherwise) on Amazon when looking at items. I tend to see professional reviews as another form of advertising and treat them as such.  When looking at online sites, I frequently look the number of ratings, the rating and the popularity of an item along with other factors.