Does Size Matter?
I was reading something at work the other day which suggested a smaller library collection is better than a bigger one. The reasoning behind this is that a smaller collection is that it is easier for a patron to find a book that they would like to read.
To quote my co-worker who wrote it, “When Opening the Book introduced the observation methods of Paco Underhill into library practice, one of the most famous early observations was the member of staff who watched the A-Z fiction sequence in her library for two hours, noting every visitor and where they moved. She was astonished to discover that in two hours, not one single person got past the letter G. People looked in the early sequence and either chose a book or gave up and moved on.”
Is this really the case? I admit I’ve worked in libraries for ten years and have been using them all of my life but I haven’t seen this but then I haven’t spent hours observing people to say one way or another. I personally go through the entire collection most of the time but then I skim the books for genre tags to find a particular type of book. If I want to read something about The Civil War, I’ll scan history books until I find something about that. It does make it easier to find a book than going through each book one by one. Does anyone actually do that? I’m truly curious about that.
I’m not saying one way or another which I prefer. I truthfully don’t know! I’m just curious as to what people think. Is it better to have books lined up in a traditional matter or is it better to have face out book displays?
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Assuming I'm not looking for something in particular, I usually go end-to-end in the fiction section, looking for covers or titles that jump out at me or books that otherwise seem to pull at me—and I often start at Z and work back to A.
That is certainly an interesting way of doing it! I admit I judge by covers too a lot of the time so I can see how a outward facing display works on that. I mean if there's one with a woman in an old fashioned dress vs one in modern day I'd pick up the former over the latter but sometimes just basing it on the genre stickers too can be interesting?
When looking for a teen fiction book at the local library for the assignment to read and evaluate, I just went to the nearest section of shelving and scanned the titles until a couple 'jumped out' at me. I then read the back cover blurb and a bit of the inside.
Sounds like a very effective way of doing it :)
