Dear Dalton Wilcox

Dear DALTON WILCOX,

Thank you very much for starting this thread. It has allowed my staff, after months of searching, to finally locate you. Please be advised that donations to the Peabody Institute Library, Danvers must be submitted to our Collection Development Committee and not just placed on a shelf in a self-made display. While we appreciate donations, please understand that this library is a classy joint and we cannot just let any riffraff in.

Upon further review of the donated text, our Collection Development Committee has decided that you, Dalton Wilcox, are no authorial riffraff and would welcome this donation. Limping Joe, the Vice Chair of the Committee, was particularly impressed with the recipes as beans form a foundation of his diet since the shelter done burned down. While attempts to follow the bolo tie instructions did lead to at least one hospital visit, the Committee did not feel this detracted from the book’s value as Jesse Walleye Perkins had it coming.

Additionally, based on the scribblings on the pizza box that serves as the Committee’s official meeting minutes, it appears that there is some interest in inviting you to speak to library patrons. Can this be arranged through your agent? We can guarantee an audience of at least a dozen people round back by the dumpster and fully catered by the same. Talks usually last roughly forty-five minutes but can go longer, weather depending. Any subject you wish to discuss would be welcome, but the Committee indicted the most interest in a poetry workshop, instructions for ‘prairie love,’ and monster identification. You would be welcome to bring additional copies of your work for sale or barter.

Please let me know if this is possible. In any case, please be advised that the following books are long overdue and must be returned as soon as possible.

Yes, You Can! A Guide to International Waters by Dr. Lehman Brown

The Malleus Maleficarum, Maleficas, & earum hæresim, ut phramea potentissima conterens by Heinrich Kramer

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Thank you for your time,

Drew Meger

Head of Circulation

Peabody Institute of Danvers

Danvers, MA

The Things You Do On Display

One of my tasks is to set up displays of fiction in hopes of enticing a patron to borrow and thus boosting my collection's circulation numbers. So far, my displays have been a mixed bag. Someone stole my first signs for a Naval Adventures in the Age of Sail display and replaced them with a totally inadequate version.

Let me repeat that - someone took my signs down and replaced them with their own. They even put a cartoon clip art of a steamship on it, thus completely missing the point of the SAIL part of Age of Sail. I assumed it was another librarian who did it (I had included the phrase "Run Out the Guns!" and guessed that guns were a touchy subject) but when I asked around for any other verbotten words I got shock and innocence.

On the plus side, my territorial ownership of a minor display area was thusly established. I did not realize how important it was to assert a given display area as your own, even if the one in question had like three books left over from a display for a dead author who was two months buried.

So with my fiefdom of the third floor shelf granted, I went a bit nuts with the next sign. Rather than a simple watermark image behind some text, I broke out the iPad and did me some artworks. Maybe I was trying to entrap the mystery sign replacer or maybe the spirit of the holidays filled me:

Holiday Crimes

 The signs were left untouched. When January hit, I switched over to:

For February, I had already decided to do a Blind Date With A Book (more on this in a later post) so wanted to avoid anything romance or relationship related. So we got:

This was largely an excuse for me to put out all the Darwyn Cooke Parker graphic novels I had bought, but whatevs. To be honest, a display tucked away on the third floor is not going to gather many eyeballs so I might as well keep it focused on being a semi-vanity project. I think there is some merit to branding certain display locations as being owned and curated by a particular librarian - it gives the patron who actually likes what is being put up someone to reach out to for their next read. I might try to step this up and lobby for some, well, lobby space for future fiction displays.

The First Lesson of Buying Fiction

ALWAYS. BUY. THE. PATTERSON.

Seriously. I admit I have never read James Patterson before and have vague memories of seeing his books in the airport, but dang is he popular. Maybe it's his ad-man background (note to self: Don Draper becomes thriller writer) or maybe it's the fact he straight up admits that he doesn't even write his books anymore and so has more time to promote, but he's all over the place. We have a standing order with a vendor to get four copies of anything with his name on it and even then there's a waiting list weeks long for a book that apparently will take an hour and a half to read.

Still, circulation numbers are important and a popular book that turns over quickly? Pure gold.

i have no throat yet i must opinion

I’m currently afflicted by a throat infection I seem to pick up every three to five years or so. The first time I got it, I was in college and the shrugging, probably underpaid, college clinic doctor was of little help. Fast forward almost two decades and the professional, attentive doctor at my HMO too was of little help, but at least he smiled and did not make me answer too many questions. Honey, salt water, silence – that’s about it.

So in the quiet space (well, quiet if you discount my coughing followed by a low moan of pain), I find myself in need of a work related project. I have been meaning to start a library blog at some point, so here we go. I do not imagine that I have anything unique, let alone interesting, to say, but eh, a quick google shows that has not stopped anyone from blogging at any time before.

I am currently the Head of Circulation for the Peabody Institute of Danvers. This means I run the circulation desk (insomuch that any circ desk is actually run) and a bunch of behind the scenes library activities. Access Services is not the most thrilling wing of library science, so I probably won’t touch on that much (This is a lie). I’ve been running service desks like this one for more than a decade now, although this is my first public library experience – I’ve been a hoity academic type previously. I’m still working on a tight five for my ‘public libraries be all like this and academic libraries be all like that’ routine, so I’ll spare you the details of the switch for the moment.

One new thing, however, is that I’m now in a library that not only carries fiction, but I seem to be the one in charge of buying it. My previous collection development experience can be pretty much summed up with “Is this book required for a class taught at this University? Yes? Two copies, please.” so I’m finding the role of taste maker rather daunting. That is, I think, what this blog will be about.