Evaluation of the Young Adult Collection

Evaluation of the Young Adult Collection

East Falmouth Branch Library

YA Collection Development Mission: To entice youth 12-18 years old to use the services of the Branch Library for recreational reading.

History of this Collection: For over five years this collection has been a catch all for stray books that were donated or ordered that did not really fit the children’s or adult collection. This section was in a back corner and most teens never made their way back there and consequently there was very poor circulation of materials.

During this time period I was Branch Assistant and was responsible for maintaining the Children’s collection. The Branch Manager selected the materials for the Young Adult Collection. It was really a “Catch-22”; the manager did not want to spend money on the YA collection, since we had very few patrons in that age group that used the library. I felt that if we developed the collection and made the area appealing the patrons would come, since there are many high school age students in the surrounding neighborhood.

In April of this year, I was promoted to Branch Manager. One of the first things that I did was ask for extra money to purchase YA paperbacks that were listed on the local middle school’s Summer Reading List. We were pretty well set for the High School Summer Reading List, since many of the books were located in the adult collection. I select material for all branch collections on a monthly basis so in addition to the 23 books that I ordered in May, I have added on average of 2 YA book choices per month.

This assignment has prompted me to critically evaluate the whole young adult collection and become deliberate in my selections for collection development.

Collection Status 11/2002:

There is an attached inventory of the collection where I have listed the books by author, title, publication date, invoiced date, circulation and notes about SRL(Summer Reading List), LCHKIN(last check in),awards and book condition. Also in the notes section of the inventory is rationale for keeping or disposing of the books. The entries for the books that I am deselecting are printed in red type.

The YA fiction collection includes about 334 books. This includes over 85 titles in the Sweet Valley paperback series, 14 paperbacks in terrible condition by Christopher Pike, 56 old R.L. Stine paperbacks. Since 46% of this collection is worn paperback books in series, it looks like a bookcase at the swap shop. The new paperback purchases represent less than 10% of the total collection.

(Note: I was not able to get a computer generated list, since we have recently changed to new software and only the network staff has list production capacity at this point.)

Deselection:

Books that I am weeding are represented in red in the attached inventory.

Duplicates – Unless a title is listed on a local school required reading list, I will dispose of the duplicate that is in the worse condition. The library is a member of an inter-library loan network and so with limited space there is no reason to keep duplicates.

Damaged material – Most patrons do not want to take home books that are bumped, chipped, cracked, foxed, frayed, stained, warped, yellowed or infested. A friend who is a reference librarian always asks this question, “Would you take this book to bed?” The majority of the older paperbacks in this collection contained badly yellowed pages. Some of the old hardcover classic titles had stains within the pages.

Old illustrations – Usually this was on the cover of the books, but sometimes within the text itself. Clothing and hairstyles of teens pictured were dated. Diana Tixier Herald in Teen Genreflecting, states that “the appearance of a book is far more important to teens than to any other group…If the people in the cover illustrations appear too young or are wearing outdated apparel, forget it!”[i]

Poor circulation – The Branch collection went online in 1994. The computer lists the number of times that an item has circulated since it has been cataloged on the automated system. I would need compelling reasons to keep a title that had circulated less than 5 times in five years. Other areas of the collection, I look for even more circulation than this, but since this area was not promoted in the past I will wait and do more weeding in a year.

Content dated – The one book in the collection on AIDS was published in 1993 and 9 years is too old for a medical subject. In some of the older fiction titles, people’s social attitudes have changed.

There are 158 books (47%) that I am withdrawing from the Young Adult Collection. The details on these items are listed in the inventory.

Tools used for evaluation and selection:

To determine what types of material to include in a young adult collection, I relied on the following:

Herald, Diana Tixier. Teen Genreflecting. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 1997. This guide outlines specific fiction genres for teens. It attempts to identify the types of fiction that young adults will choose to read on their own. The author clearly states that the titles included are not rated for “age appropriateness”. There were seven basic fiction genres discussed by chapter: historical novels, science fiction, fantasy, mystery/suspense/horror, adventure, contemporary, and romance. Sub-genre was described in detail.

Jones, Patrick. Connecting Young Adults and Libraries. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 1992. The author states that his book is for, “libraries who are trying to provide some level of quality YA service without the benefit of a YA professional”. I used this resource to try to identify what teens want in a library collection. There was also a section on soul searching questions for the librarian to decide if they were going to provide what is popular with young adults or select what they think that young people “should” read. I decided that the recreational reading section of the branch library only has very limited space for what I would want young adults to read and the rest of the area should be devoted to what is popular.

YALSA: 2000 Best of the Best Selections, “100 Best Books for Teens”. (http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/bestofbest2000.html)

This is a list of 100 titles selected by librarians at the ALA 2000 Annual Conference as the best YA books published from 1966-2000. I compared this list to what the branch library owns and discovered that we had 27 of the 100 books listed. Some of these books are shelved in other areas of the library (Children or Adult sections) so I will change the shelving location and this should provide a good core Young Adult collection to build on.

People Resources:

I toured the Young Adult section of the main library with the YA Librarian. Suggestions: Prominently display material, since books on display circulate; teens are browsers; in addition to general popular fiction, collect magazines, comics, fashion how to, and books on sex. She said the books on sex are usually just viewed in the library, since most teens don’t have the courage to check them out. The librarian also let me peruse a years worth of circulation reports by category within the YA section. The statistics proved the librarian’s point about comic books, since the circulation figures for YA art books and comics was exceptionally high considering that this is just a small section of the collection.

Informally I asked the following young people what they liked to read. Here are the replies,

Marcus, age 17 – Science fiction, order anything about Star Wars or Star Trek. Also buy anything written by Phillip Dick, Isaac Asimov or Timothy Zahn. (Note: This is a patron who is such an avid reader that I search for several interlibrary loans of science fiction each week.)

Molly, age 16 – You will probably be surprised but I really like fantasy. A lot of kid’s stuff, like Harry Potter.

(This is a frequent patron of the main library YA section.)

Dirk, age 13 – Mom, you know I don’t like to read anything he says, as he is perusing the Best Buy flyer. If I had to read, I would read either mysteries or sports. This was qualified as both fiction and nonfiction sports. (Note: Dirk thinks that the only reason to visit the library is to visit friends and stay out of the cold on Main St. I happen to know that he reads the Sports section of the Boston Globe first thing every morning and waits anxiously for his subscription to Sports Illustrated.

Leif, age 16 – I only like to read magazines. Order the following: Maxim, Stuff, FHM, Eurotuner, Hondatuner, Super Street, and Sport Compact. (Note: Well I asked for it, but I also want to keep my job. I looked this list of serial titles up and discovered the first three are men’s magazines and the others are about cars.)

Lilly, age 16 – I mostly read mysteries like Agatha Christie.

Selection Tools:

American Library Association’s Booklist Magazine is available online at http://www.ala.org/booklist. Reviews can be found for new Young Adult selections. I used volumes 98 and 99, since I wanted only the most recent books.

www.barnesandnoble.com – I used this site to see lists of best selling books, especially comic books. When you look up a title you can also find reviews from Kliatt, School Library Journal, VOYA, etc.

Books for the Teen Age is published annually by the Office of Young Adult Services of the New York Public Library. The book contains a list of about 1000 titles organized by genre for Young Adult readers.

http://www.nypl.org/teen.html

Kliatt, a bimonthly magazine that reviews young adult material. I was unable to obtain a copy of this publication, but noted the reviews listed on Barnesandnoble.com.

School Library Journal 11/2002 – Read reviews for books for grade 5 and up.

VOYA, Voice of Youth Advocates a bimonthly magazine for adults working with adolescent readers. The publisher’s goal is to promote a teen’s right to read what they want. In addition to reviews there are features like program ideas and author interviews

ALA Young Adult Library Services Association book lists.

2003 Quick Picks for Young Adults www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/quickpicks/03qpnoms.html

2003 Best Books for Young Adults Nominations

www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/bbya/03bbyanoms.html

2003 Popular Paperback Nominations

www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/poppaper/03popapernoms.html

Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers 2002

www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/quickpicks/2002quickpicks.html

Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults 2002

www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/poppaper/poppaper02.html

These lists contained author, title, publisher and ISBN. I had to look to other sources for reviews.

“Warts and All! Biographies & Autobiographies Teens Will Read!” an annotated list maintained by the Young Adult Librarians in the Santa Clara County Library System.

http://www-lib.co.santa-clara.ca.us/teen/biblbios.html

Selections for Purchase:

Author	Title	ISBN	Price	Reviewed
Almond, David	Secret Heart	0-385-72947-2	15.95	Booklist 10/1/02	Feelings
Barker, Clive	Abarat	0-060280921	24.99	SLJ 2002	Horror
Burgess, Melvin	Lady: My Life as a Bitch	0-8050-7148-2	16.95	Booklist 6/15/02	SF
Bruchac, Joseph	Winter People	0-8037-2694-5	16.99	Booklist 10/1/02	HF
Canfield, Jack L.	Chicken soup for the teenage soul on love…	0-7573-0022-7	12.95
Clinton, Cathryn	Stone in my hand	0-7636-1388-6	15.99	Booklist 9/15/02	Global
Davis, Jim	Garfield eats crow (pb)	0-3454-5201-1	10.95		Graphic
Delancy, Morgan	Dave Matthews Band: Step into the light 2nd ed.(pb)	1-5502-2443-3	16.95	VOYA, 2001	NF
Dick, Philip K.	Minority Report and other classic stories (pb)	0-8065-2379-4	14.95	VOYA	SF
Drill, Esther	Looks Book (pb)	0-1420-0211-9	17	gURL
Farmer, Nancy	House of Scorpion	0-6898-5222-3	17.95	SLJ 2002
Foster, Alan Dean	Star Wars: The Approaching storm (pb)	0-3454-4299-7	6.99	SLJ 2002, VOYA 2002	SF
Frank, Hillary	Better than running at night(pb)	0-618-25073-5	10	Booklist 10/1/02	Relation Fiction
Frazier, Walt	Basketball's Best Shots	0-7894-8914-7	30	YALSA:2003 Quick Picks	NF
Gantos, Jack	Hole in my life	0-374-39988-3	16	Booklist 4/1/02	BIOG
Giblin, James Cross	Life and death of Adolf Hitler	0-395-90371-8	21	Booklist 4/1/02	BIOG
Groening, Matt	Futurama-O-Rama(pb)	0-060-50598-2	12.95		Graphic
Groening, Matt	Simpsons Beyond Forever (pb)	0-060-50592-3	13.95	YALSA:2003 Quick Picks	Graphic
Hawk, Tony	Between Boardslides and burnout	0-060-08631-9	15.95	YALSA:2003 Quick Picks	BIOG
Highfield, Roger	Science of Harry Potter	0-670-03153-4	23.95	SLJ	NF
Hobbs, Valerie	Sonny's war	0-374-37136-9	16	SLJ 2002	HF
Howard, Megan (editor)	Sex Files (pb)	0-064-47319-8	6.95	KLIATT 11/01	NF
Jennings, Lynette	Have fun with your room (pb)	0-689-82585-4	12	YALSA:2003 Quick Picks, SLJ	NF
Johnson, Angela	Looking for red	0-689-83253-2	15.95	VOYA	F-Cape Cod
Jukes, Mavis	Guy book: an owners manual	0-679-89028-9	12.95	VOYA, SLJ	NF
Karr, Kathleen	Playing with fire	0-374-23453-1	16	VOYA 6/2001	MYS
Lubar, David	Dunk	0-618-19455X	15	SLJ	Relation Fiction
Meyer, Stephanie	Teen Ink: Love and relationships (pb)	0-155-874969-1	12.95	VOYA, 8/2002 SLJ	NF
McCaughrean, Geraldine	Kite Rider	0-06-623874-9	15.95	Booklist 5/15/02	Global
Pavanel, Jane	Sex Book: An Alphabet of smarter love (pb)	1-894222-30-X	14.95	VOYA, 8/2002	NF
Peck, Robert	Horse thief	0-06-623791-2	16.95	Booklist 5/15/02
Pollack, Pamela	Ski!: Extreme sports your guide(pb)	0-792-26738-9	8.95	YALSA:2003 Quick Picks, Booklist	NF
Schwager, Tina	Cool women, hot jobs(pb)	1-57542-109-7	15.95	VOYA, 8/2002	NF
Seckel, Al	Great book of optical illusions	1-55297-650-5	24.95	YALSA:2003 Quick Picks	NF
Wittlinger, Ellen	Razzle	0-689-83565-5	17	Booklist 11/1/01	F-Cape Cod
Yancey, Diane	STD's: What you don't know can hurt you	0-761-31957-3	26.9	SLJ	NF
Zettel, Sarah	Sorcerer's Treason	0-312-87441-3	27.95	VOYA, 8/2002	SF
		TOTAL	609.76

The total retail price for the Young Adult purchase order is $609.76. When I did some fact finding for our Unit 7 assignment, I discovered that our library purchased materials from vendors using the buying power of the MARLS Cooperative which offers free shipping and 45.5% discount on hardcover. The mass paperback discount is 39.3%, so on this mixed order I could receive an average discount of 42.4% or $258.54. That would make the total purchase price around $350.

The goal in developing this collection was to make it appealing and accessible to the neighborhood teens. The process was to take an inventory, weed, listen to young adults, read reviews and then select current material to augment what remains of the core collection. I was aware that the branch library did not really have magazines for our young adult patrons, so when I had to send in our EBSCO subscription renewals, I had added a few selections for this audience.

This project has been more than theoretical for me. I intend to use this work to develop the YA Collection at the branch library. I will request additional funds to purchase the books listed. If I am unable to secure funding at this time, then I will order part of the list out of my regular budget and then I will have to develop another list later.