Let's not forget the Edgar Awards, presented in the U.S. for the year's
best mysteries.
Dave
Hi Mike,
You've essentially hit the nail on the head: how to balance pr and complete snazzy award collections with the everyday reality of getting X number of current, bestselling and timely books on the site while they're still timely.
No doubt there is a manpower issue, and there's also a very real budgetary issue. We certainly have the in-house volunteer resources to produce anywhere from 50-100 current books a month. However, with the high speed scanner, we destroy all of the books we scan, meaning that any NEW hardback we want to put on the site will cost us about $20 plus the manpower. So, a lot of in-house production is done with what we have--donations and rejected library books from the 1990s. And, since NLS produces at least some bestsellers anywhere from six months to a year after they're out, it's challenging to know what we want to prioritize.
I brought up this thread on the volunteer homepage because the collection development policy is something we're revisiting and revising. Thanks for all of your input on "awards books" thus far. I need to emphasize, this isn't the central focus of collection development. But it is nice to say that maybe every year or every six months, we'll be adding a complete set of "something" to the site, in addition to a newfound push for what's current.
And on the subject of awards, I think it would be great to get all of the Nebula Award winners up there--which is granted by the Science Fiction Writers Association every year for best science fiction novel (and novella). Thanks to many submitters, we already have half the winners in the novel categories up. It might be fun to try to complete the list by June or July. I can post it if anyone's interested.
Best, Marissa
-----Original Message----- From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Mike Pietruk Sent: Thu 2/10/2005 12:38 PM To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: More Awards for Bookshare? Shelley
While certainly havingg award winning books in the collection is a worth while project, whatever that award category happens to be, especially from a pr perspective, I suspect average readers would be more impressed if goals such as having best sellers available within "xx" days or weeks,book of the month type selections, et al were approached as target projects. More customers will read a best selling romance, mystery, or expose -- and certainly these books are more often discussed around the office -- than Pulitzer or Newberry books. The question is whether these projects are first viewed for their pr value or for providing the types of things that people in the everyday world read. Ideally, one should have both. That's how a conventional library is built; and that ought to be the approach BookShare should follow in expanding its collection.
