Week Five Prompt Response

In my previous position working for a high school library, 80% of the collection development was student-driven and the other 20% came from main librarian and I. We encouraged students to look through Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and other professional publications to get ideas for books they wanted to add to the collection if they felt 'stuck'. However, if they wanted to add a book that had no professional reviews we would still order the book for our collection. Besides manga or a book centered on a students' specific interest, I would say the majority of students found the books they wanted to add to our collection through combing professional reviews. It is interesting that before now I had not thought about whether or not this was fair or caused any issues.


The Billionaire's First Christmas does not appear to be specifically a romantic suspense novel anymore than any other romance novel as the suspense seems to lie in whether the couple will get together and as we know with romance novels the couple will always end up together in the end. Despite not having professional reviews, this is still a novel I would consider adding to my collection. I would not spend large amounts of money or work adding it to the collection, as I believe it is not necessarily a time-tested, permanent addition. Yet, it seems to be popular with a particular crowd seeking a particular type of novel (Christmas romance). After spending last Christmas at home with my mom watching endless Christmas Lifetime movies I can attest that this is definitely a category. Angela's Ashes is also a book I would consider adding to my collection. However, I would be more willing to spend more time and money buying the book because I believe it is a longer lasting addition to the collection that will have appeal to readers for many years to come.

In an ideal situation I think the range of books reviewed should be wider to include all various genres, formats, and publishers. However I also understand why it is the way it is now. With independent publishers and e-book only publications, the amount of content available for potential review is seemingly endless. Professional publications, perhaps competing with one another, want to review the books they believe will be making the greatest impact on readers and gaining the most popularity. Yet this in turn means that a successful author with a long series of books may be getting the 20th book in their series reviewed in multiple publications yet again while an emerging author trying something new in writing for the first time ends up having less reviews and a smaller impact than they could be having because the already successful author is still being reviewed. I do not often use reviews for my own personal reading. Instead, I usually rely on friend recommendations. Yet in previous jobs, such as the high school library mentioned above, reviews were a much larger part of my book selection.