Approximately twice a year the technical services/cataloging assistant brings me a listing of juvenile books that are missing, lost and paid, or gathering dust living under beds in the dorms until the end of the year. I go through the list and determine what titles and their corresponding records can, and should, be deleted from the catalog. The multi-page document has been sitting on top of my growing "to do" pile (yes, I did mean to write pile and not list) beckoning me for attention. The end of last week I determined what could be deleted and what I wanted to re-order. And, because I am greedy about my book buying budget, I asked the acquisitions librarian if the replacement copies should be ordered from a specific line. If money was collected for "lost and paid," that same money should be used to purchase replacements.
While the cataloging librarian was a bit taken aback that I asked, she almost speechless to learn the answer to my question was yes (hah!). The answer I wanted, as opposed to the answer I was expecting, did not change the number of titles I had slotted for replacement; but it does mean I can spend that money elsewhere. Many of the missing books were dated with the topics better served by newer titles and others were unavailable due to the short publication life of non-award-winning and/or classic children's literature. However, some of titles were award winners and purchasing replacements was easy. Here are a few of the books being replaced:
- Dream snow, Eric Carle (Eric Carle!)
- Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, Eric Carle
- Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech (Newbery Medal)
- A Year Down Yonder, Richard Peck (Newbery Medal)
- The Deaf Musicians - Pete Seeger (curriculum use, new title)
- The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales - Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith
- The Messenger - Lois Lowry
- Remember: The Journey to School Integration - Toni Morrison
As the end of term nears, Friday is the last day of classes, it is also time to clean up things around the resource center. Bulletin boards were updated before Thanksgiving, and today the new book shelves were emptied and sent to the circulation desk for shelving. Even with constant use by the students, there were six shelves of books to be returned to the collection. I no sooner finished loading books on to a cart than the technical services assistant brought me a full cart of new titles! Here are a few of the juvenile and young adult books that caught my interest and have been added to my personal cache of reading materials in my office:
- The Chicken dance, by Jacques Couvillon
- November Blues, by Sharon M. Draper
- Looking for JJ, by Anne Cassidy
- The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex
- The Slippery Map, by N.E.Bodeand Brandon Dorman
- Spanking Shakespeare by, Jake Wizner and Richard Ewing
- Bounce by, Natasha Friend
- The Black Book of Secrets by, F.E. Higgins
- What the Dickens: The story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy, by Gregory Maguire
Whether or not I actually read all of these books is still to be decided. But, as of today they are mine for a month. Plenty of time for some lunchtime reading and even to take home over the holiday.
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