I went on a library kick a few weeks ago, and in the process read a number of the newest additions to our popular collection. They were all pretty fluffy (hey, it's summertime), but still a fun dip into what the collection has to offer.
She-Hulk, vol. 1: Single Green Female; She-Hulk, vol. 2: Superhuman Law by Dan Slott
Legal Elements: Mild-mannered attorney Jennifer Walters prefers her life as brassy She-Hulk, but when her increasingly raucous behavior gets her kicked out of the Avengers mansion and tossed from her high-powered firm job, her only option is to accept a new position: serving superhuman clients as Jennifer, not She-Hulk.
This is the first She-Hulk story I've read, but it was pretty obvious the legal aspects were incidental to most prior She-Hulk stories. Here, they're front and center. I most enjoyed the first volume, when the stories take place on Earth, in a normal courtroom. Spider-Man suing J. Jonah Jameson for libel? Yes, please. The second volume goes to outer space (and inter-galactic law), a fun idea that fizzled in execution.
Murder on Nob Hill by Shirley Tallman
Legal Elements: Sarah Woolson is one of the first female attorneys in the country, trying to be taken seriously in 1880 San Francisco. After some clever maneuvering gets her a place in a local firm, she sets out to defend a young widow accused of killing her rich, older husband.
A decent enough start to a new series, though the story is often lurid for what seems to be no other reason than to be lurid. And the constant "I am woman, hear me roar" litany got old.
Savor the Moment by Nora Roberts
Legal Elements: The hero is a lawyer. And he's nice to an older client in a brief scene, I think? I really couldn't be bothered to remember.
I'm not saying I was expecting this book to be all about the law, but I was at least hoping to, you know, root for the couple? Roberts put way more energy into the gal pal moments and the wedding planner bits than the rest, which made for a bland, forgettable read.
Solomon vs. Lord by Paul Levine
Legal Elements: Steve Solomon, a solo practice defense attorney, teams up with blue-blooded recent grad Victoria Lord to defend a young widow accused of killing her rich, older husband (waaaait....). Steve is also trying to gain custody of his young nephew.
I completely enjoyed this one. Light and breezy with good dialogue and local color. Levine, himself a former attorney, throws in all kinds of genuine Florida law (Fla. Stat. citations!) for an authentic feel. And the ending isn't your typical legal thriller ending, for which I give it extra points.
The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson
Legal Elements: Three sisters and their mother create stories in which they know many famous (and real) people, including a High Court judge and his wife. When the eldest daughter actually meets the Toddingtons, no one is sure of how to reconcile the imagined with the actual.
I loved this book in places. I also wanted to throw it across the room in others. Then it would suddenly be charming again. It was often very difficult to know if what you were reading had actually happened or was part of an imagined history. And the family is disturbingly unsympathetic to those who do not buy into their fantasies. Hrm.
Why Shoot a Butler? by Georgette Heyer
Legal Elements: Frank Amberley, a barrister, comes upon a murder on an English country road and takes it upon himself to solve the crime (to say nothing of snarking on the attempts of the local police to do the same).
Wow, I finally found a Heyer book I really enjoyed. I keep trying to read her books (both the regencies and the mysteries) because everyone from my mother to Michael Dirda recommends them, but I'd yet to hit on one that really interested me. Mr. Amberley didn't really do any barrister-y things here, but he was excellent company along the way. Success!
So. You can see some definite themes to my recent selections: mysteries and feminism, oh my. Yet despite their similarities of theme, the books were each distinctly their own. Whoever started this popular collection is brilliant! Oh wait. Never mind.
Showing posts with label my library was dukedom large enough. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my library was dukedom large enough. Show all posts
20 May 2010
Aborted Musings on Book Browsing
I have had a half-completed post sitting in my text editor for over two weeks now. It was partially on browsing for books (and how that doesn't really happen in academic libraries) and partially on how I judge books by their covers all the time. I really did intend to share deep thinky-thoughts with you all, but I just can't seem to get them written in a coherent form. Instead, I'm stuck saying things like "thinky-thoughts".
Anyway, so what I'm going to do is share all the links that got me ruminating on the topic, and maybe it'll get you pondering too.
I used to spend hours browsing the bookstore, library or bookmobile shelves. Is it just me? Or have you noticed a change in your browsing behavior too? Are we doing our students a disservice by tossing book covers?
Anyway, so what I'm going to do is share all the links that got me ruminating on the topic, and maybe it'll get you pondering too.
- The Guardian recently ran an article explaining why books often get different covers depending on where they are printed.
- And there's a related post on books with similar covers but different prices over at Inklings.
- The North Carolina State University Library has released some open source software which allows users to virtually browse shelves.
- And the American Libraries website posted an article tackling The Myth of Browsing, which maintains, among other things, "Because the books in highest demand are most likely to be in use and, thus, off the shelf, browsing academic library shelves is the equivalent of hitting the sale tables on day three of a three-day sale."
I used to spend hours browsing the bookstore, library or bookmobile shelves. Is it just me? Or have you noticed a change in your browsing behavior too? Are we doing our students a disservice by tossing book covers?
10 May 2010
The Popular Collection, Nine Months On
The students are all busy with exams, and the library is quiet as another semester draws to a close. Sounds like a good time to take a quick look at how the popular collection has grown and changed over the last term. We're in a fairly steady rhythm when it comes to ordering now; a dozen or so titles are added to the books each month, and we've just doubled the size of the movie collection (from ~30 to ~60) after a successful first six-week run. I don't expect any big changes in that respect at this point. There have been two major modifications to how the collection is managed, though: the list is now updated automatically, and we aren't just ordering the books from YBP anymore.
Managing the Lists
The original layout was simple: a webpage listing titles and links to their catalog records. The list was split in two (books and movies) as more titles were added, but each page was still updated manually as every new order arrived. That, understandably, got unwieldy. Visit the book[1] page now and you are presented with a series of links to the catalog, one for the complete title list and the rest for various genres. These lists are automatically updated each time a new title is added to the collection, thanks to the local 690 field. Each record is augmented with a collection description as well as a broad genre listing[2] (e.g. legal classics or mystery and thrillers); these genres were added to help book browsers quickly locate the type of book which interests them. The links on the collection page are subject/keyword searches based on that information. Although it creates a tiny bit of extra work to add this information once we grab the record, it also makes the webpage cleaner, more accurate, and takes readers directly to the record (and therefore more information about the book) without the intermediate step.
Ordering
Our first orders for the popular collection were placed with two companies, Amazon (movies) and YBP (books). Every so often I'd run across a book YBP didn't carry, but the selection seemed generally good. As we moved beyond popular titles like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Pelican Brief, though, it got harder to find everything through Yankee. If it wasn't a perennial seller or new, it wasn't there. We buy a lot of mysteries and thrillers because they're checked out most often, and many of those authors write series. You can see where this is going, yeah? We could get #8 in the series through Yankee but not #1. We needed another source. There was a brief flirtation with the idea of getting books through Baker & Taylor, YBP's parent company, but we already had an Amazon account and got the movies there anyway, so Amazon won. When it comes time to place another order, I check YBP then Amazon as needed. Between the two, we can find pretty much any title we want to add.
I can't say how happy I am to see the collection continue to grow. Learning to manage that growth has been been a fantastic learning experience too, from deciding what to purchase and how to present the collection to navigating the vendor waters. Looking forward to what I learn next. As the Doctor said to the TARDIS, what have you got for me this time?
[1] At present, the movie page is still updated manually; that will change as more titles are added.
[2] Now, technically, the genres should be listed in the 655 (specifically a genre field), but our system isn't set up to search that, so the 690 it is.
Managing the Lists
The original layout was simple: a webpage listing titles and links to their catalog records. The list was split in two (books and movies) as more titles were added, but each page was still updated manually as every new order arrived. That, understandably, got unwieldy. Visit the book[1] page now and you are presented with a series of links to the catalog, one for the complete title list and the rest for various genres. These lists are automatically updated each time a new title is added to the collection, thanks to the local 690 field. Each record is augmented with a collection description as well as a broad genre listing[2] (e.g. legal classics or mystery and thrillers); these genres were added to help book browsers quickly locate the type of book which interests them. The links on the collection page are subject/keyword searches based on that information. Although it creates a tiny bit of extra work to add this information once we grab the record, it also makes the webpage cleaner, more accurate, and takes readers directly to the record (and therefore more information about the book) without the intermediate step.
Ordering
Our first orders for the popular collection were placed with two companies, Amazon (movies) and YBP (books). Every so often I'd run across a book YBP didn't carry, but the selection seemed generally good. As we moved beyond popular titles like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Pelican Brief, though, it got harder to find everything through Yankee. If it wasn't a perennial seller or new, it wasn't there. We buy a lot of mysteries and thrillers because they're checked out most often, and many of those authors write series. You can see where this is going, yeah? We could get #8 in the series through Yankee but not #1. We needed another source. There was a brief flirtation with the idea of getting books through Baker & Taylor, YBP's parent company, but we already had an Amazon account and got the movies there anyway, so Amazon won. When it comes time to place another order, I check YBP then Amazon as needed. Between the two, we can find pretty much any title we want to add.
I can't say how happy I am to see the collection continue to grow. Learning to manage that growth has been been a fantastic learning experience too, from deciding what to purchase and how to present the collection to navigating the vendor waters. Looking forward to what I learn next. As the Doctor said to the TARDIS, what have you got for me this time?
[1] At present, the movie page is still updated manually; that will change as more titles are added.
[2] Now, technically, the genres should be listed in the 655 (specifically a genre field), but our system isn't set up to search that, so the 690 it is.
06 January 2010
Creating a popular collection in a law library
Our library recently started a law-related popular media collection. Which is just a fancy way of saying we're now buying books and movies featuring (mostly) fictional accounts of the law and lawyers. Okay, technically, it's just books for now, but we've got about 30 movies to add to the collection soon as well.
I had an English professor in college who advocated the following writing process: When you've got a paper to write and you've gotten stuck, take a break from writing by doing some related activity. For example, if you're writing about The Importance of Being Earnest, see a production of it. Or read about the trial of Oscar Wilde on Wikipedia. Make yourself some cucumber sandwiches. Soon enough you'll be ready to get back to the main task, now with a slightly broader outlook.
It's an idea I thoroughly embraced. It stayed with me, in slightly adapted form, throughout law school, and when it comes to work was one of the guiding principles behind the new collection. Law students need a break too. But for various reasons they're often unwilling to take one. By providing them with law-related stories, we're offering an alternative to studying without taking too much of a step away.
We piloted the collection during the Fall semester, choosing a wide range of books: from legal classics that every law student feels they should read (One L, To Kill a Mockingbird) to Shakespeare and Plato and Grisham to books professors often recommend like Bleak House and The Once and Future King.
About a third of the collection was checked out at least once, and it was obvious from the broken bindings that many more were read here in the library. We declared that a success, and doubled the size of the collection for the new semester. The legal thrillers in particular were popular so I emphasized that on the last order. I'll also be making a regular monthly order to keep the collection growing.
The next step will be adding the movies to the collection. I expect them to be checked out even more than the books, but that's just a hypothesis for now. I'd also like to fancy up the collection's webpage. The layout is pretty bland at present.
It's been an interesting process, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the collection grows.
I had an English professor in college who advocated the following writing process: When you've got a paper to write and you've gotten stuck, take a break from writing by doing some related activity. For example, if you're writing about The Importance of Being Earnest, see a production of it. Or read about the trial of Oscar Wilde on Wikipedia. Make yourself some cucumber sandwiches. Soon enough you'll be ready to get back to the main task, now with a slightly broader outlook.
It's an idea I thoroughly embraced. It stayed with me, in slightly adapted form, throughout law school, and when it comes to work was one of the guiding principles behind the new collection. Law students need a break too. But for various reasons they're often unwilling to take one. By providing them with law-related stories, we're offering an alternative to studying without taking too much of a step away.
We piloted the collection during the Fall semester, choosing a wide range of books: from legal classics that every law student feels they should read (One L, To Kill a Mockingbird) to Shakespeare and Plato and Grisham to books professors often recommend like Bleak House and The Once and Future King.
About a third of the collection was checked out at least once, and it was obvious from the broken bindings that many more were read here in the library. We declared that a success, and doubled the size of the collection for the new semester. The legal thrillers in particular were popular so I emphasized that on the last order. I'll also be making a regular monthly order to keep the collection growing.
The next step will be adding the movies to the collection. I expect them to be checked out even more than the books, but that's just a hypothesis for now. I'd also like to fancy up the collection's webpage. The layout is pretty bland at present.
It's been an interesting process, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the collection grows.
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