While current awareness is important for managing collections, it is especially important for selection. The selector needs to establish a mechanism to identify and review potential additions to the collection. Without current awareness, the collection would soon become stale and unattractive. Many users want the latest information or entertainment so that selecting new items in a timely manner is crucial.
How one approaches current awareness is often a function of philosophy. Value-oriented selectors focus on goodness. They seek the best new and older items to add to the collection. Typically, they look for authorities and authoritative review sources likely to identify "the best." Reviews of scholarly items and those for children often focus on goodness and taste. There may be little interest in what is "hot" or popular.
Checking with colleagues in person or via discussion lists or news groups will often yield the names of authoritative review sources. Sometimes periodical directories or selective lists of web sites will identify leading periodicals or web sites via their institutional or organizational affiliation. Once the reviewing source has been identified, the value-oriented selector spends sometime becoming familiar with reviewers. It is usually helpful to compare a few books in hand with the review. With confidence in the reviewer's judgment, it's full steam ahead.
This approach to developing a current awareness reading/viewing list does include problems. If current awareness is print periodical based, many agencies have limited collections of subject specific periodicals (where the most authoritative reviews are found). Research libraries may have the collection, but find it difficult to get staff to periodically review relevant titles. Web based current awareness may be problematic because of the large number of possibilities and the flux in availability. As with the reader reviews on Amazon.com, it may be difficult to verify the authority of the reviewer. More important, reviews by authorities usually take longer to be completed and published so that time-lag is a major problem. Many STM selectors no longer use reviews for this reason. Some items will no longer be available when enough specialist reviews are available. Finally, experts may find it difficult to appreciate works created for a popular audience since these are always somewhat simplified.
While demand-oriented selectors also need to know about new material, they are interested in likely popularity and demand instead of goodness. This is NOT to say that they will select "bad" items, but they wish to have what people want just before they ask for it. This is similar to what a buyer for a retail outlet would do. Ideally, the popular material would also be of good quality. This is certainly true of most items selected in research collections. Clearly, some public libraries will select highly popular items of low or mediocre quality while it is doubtful that this would ever happen in a school library media center.
In order to avoid "stock outs," demand-oriented selectors attempt to anticipate demand and select items so that they will be on the shelf when demand happens. There is little point in ordering a popular item and having it on the shelf when interest has flagged and it is now a shelf sitter. Thus, this selector needs review sources with "pre-publication" reviews and reviews likely to focus on popularity. For example, Publishers Weekly does this for books since its audience is the buyer for the retail book store. Information about advertising budget and "subsidiary rights" may indicate likely popularity.
It's not enough to know which new items reviewers believe are likely to be popular. The demand-oriented selector should also be aware of which "events" in the community are likely to stimulate demand for a particular item or class of items. For example, an interview with an author on a morning network TV program may cause people to visit their public library and ask for a particular work. Events might include:
Once want stimulators are identified, the selector needs to identify how to learn when the event will happen. For example, if a TV show creates demand for author's work, then you need to learn which authors will be on the show in the future. Both the ABA Newswire aimed at bookstores and the Get Ready Sheet aimed at libraries provide this information. Web sites, for example Amazon.com and Publishers Weekly's Bookwire, are also useful.
It is also essential to be able to predict the likely life of the demand.If demand life is short, purchase selection may be inappropriate. Lease plans, such as McNaughton's, would be a better choice. The thoughtful selector knows how long it takes to place a new item on the shelf ready for use. If it takes six weeks to get an item on the shelf, you need to be confident that there will still be enough interest after that date.
Traditional book review sources likely to identify popular items (ranked)
Many vendors also produce lists of most popular items based upon their sales. These lists may be available on their WWW site or via a newsletter sent directly to customers.
The demand-oriented selector must make at least two decisions:
Although rarely done, an alternative to duplicate copies would be to adjust the circulation period so that more popular items circulate for fewer days. For items with a relatively short demand life, "leased books" from McNaughton or another vendor might be a reasonable response to duplicate copies.
The most popular items in a category are often called "Best Sellers." Best seller lists are available for a wide variety of goods and services from automobiles to laptops to videos and books. Lack of a standard definition or threshold may be a problem. Many best sellers are not audited and it is not always clear how the list is compiled. With barcoded inventory, sales figures should be solid rather than the estimates often reported to best selling lists in the past. Many community members will expect to find "best sellers" in stores and information agencies regardless of the validity and reliability of the list. The most famous book best seller list is compiled by the New York Times which queries a selected list of representative book stores once each week. Some independent book stores no longer report to NYTBR because their web site has an exclusive relationship with Barnes and Noble. A study of best seller list rankings for popular fiction and nonfiction appearing in PW in 1997 suggests that the different bookstore lists--Barnes & Noble, Borders, Waldenbooks, Amazon--and vendor lists--Ingrams-- are much more likely to agree for fiction titles than nonfiction. In fact, there was little agreement for nonfiction titles so that a work might be 1 on one list and 17 on another.
For a specialized product, a small number of sales may qualify for a best seller. A general product may sell in the hundreds of thousands and still not quality as a best seller.
There are many best seller lists and you will need to find those that best fit your community. For example, the book best seller list in USA Today is quite different from that found in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal (only chain sales) or the Chronicle of Higher Education.
While there is some substantial historical, and contemporary evidence of manipulation of best selling lists, and most played lists, for music phonorecords and CDs, most "most popular" lists are reasonably valid and reliable. An exception was the recent case of Discipline of Market Leaders where the author manipulated BW and NYTBR best seller list by buying 10,000 copies and having colleagues buy 30,000 copies of the book at key locations throughout the U.S.
Not all sales count. Often, lists are limited to items sold at a particular type of retail outlet. For example, sales from book clubs, airport newsstands, and other nonbook retail outlets are not counted in creating best seller lists. Some quite popular mass market items sold in a wide variety of locations are undercounted. Books sold in religious book stores and books sold in other retail speciality stores--computer books in a computer store--are also not counted. Books of regional, state, or local interest are not likely to make the national lists even though they may be genuine best sellers within their geographical area.
While the literature contains several articles on the defects of most popular lists, they are not really relevant. People want to read, view, and listen to what is popular. Are they really best sellers? This may not matter. It is the perception that counts.
At one time, ALA created a most popular list based on circulation in larger public libraries. The intent was to make libraries more visible. Some important findings:
As an information professional it is assumed that:
There are several problems that may inhibit good performance in current awareness:
There is no royal or right way. Like physical fitness, you must find a way that works for you. The key is simple:
Without effective and efficient current awareness, the collection developer/manager is likely to be incompetent.
Select an information agency of your choice. If you wish, you may also select a subject,audience, or format
Where would you find experts who can identify the best new material? Which review sources are likely to contain authoritative reviews that focus on goodness. How difficult is it to identify experts and their reviews?
Do you consider yourself to be more of a value or more of a demand-oriented selector? Why? To what degree should public library collections be like large chain book store collections?
Select an information agency and a community. Which events or sources in your community are likely to stimulate demand for recreational and informational material?
Obviously, there is a trade-off between ordering one copy (which allows you to select a wide variety of items) or ordering several copies (which restricts your ability to order different items. Select an information agency and community. When should you order duplicate copies? What rules would you follow to answer the question "how many copies"?
Select an information agency and a community. Discuss the steps that you would take to develop and implement your personal professional current awareness program. How would you evaluate its effectiveness?
