A library that provides Current Topics & Titles helps to fulfill community residents' appetite for information about popular cultural and social trends and their desire for satisfying recreational experiences. Current Topics & Titles answers our community's need for speedy access to recent popular materials.
Transylvania County, "Land of Waterfalls", is a small, rural, mountain county located in southwestern North Carolina. The county is gaining fame as a retirement haven and our population is growing proportionately. Presently, nearly 20% of our population of 27,558 is age 65 and over. We have 13,537 registered borrowers, or roughly 48% of the population. The Transylvania County Library serves the county with one library, in Brevard, and a bookmobile. Our full time staff of twelve includes four librarian positions.
Our target audience is the general population and our emphasis is on print materials for adults, young adults and children.
Our approach is simply to identify and receive potentially hot titles as quickly as possible, get them into circulation, publicize availability, and minimize wait time. To accomplish this,
- We identify popular authors of both adult and children's books and utilize our vendor's "Automatically Yours" program to ensure that we receive these titles immediately upon publication.
- Since our statistics indicate that YA titles circulate best in paperback, we buy multiple copies of "hot" YA titles in this format.
- We invest heavily in a leasing program to make sure that an adequate number of copies are available. We currently lease one copy for every 5-6 reserve requests.
- Our Technical Services staff is committed to providing one-day turn around time on hot titles when necessary. Standard is 3-5 days.
- We are into book displays in a big way! The most popular is, and always has been, our "Staff Picks". This is a display adjacent to the Circulation Desk which acts much like "point of purchase" advertising. Many users tell us they never look anywhere else!
- We've used NoveList to generate colorful customized reading lists on various fiction genres such as "Naval Warfare", "Arthurian Legend", "Medical Horror", and "Classic Spy & Espionage." NoveList is also available on all of our public Internet terminals.
- We get the word out about hot titles in a weekly column in our local newspaper entitled What's New at the Library. The column includes capsule reviews of several brand new fiction and non-fiction titles. Colorful copies of this column are placed on our New Book Display. We post this list plus a marked copy of the New York Times Bestseller List in a special area of the Reference Desk with a basket full of reserve slips and "Request to Purchase" cards nearby.
- The Friend's newsletter features reviews of new adult books each month.
- In addition, the YA Librarian has added a column entitled YA 30-second Book Review.
- Books ordered from patron requests are given top priority in cataloging and the requesting person is notified by telephone that the book is waiting for them.
- We take to the air waves once every week. Wednesday mornings our local radio station does a call in to the library. In addition to mentioning upcoming events, staff members discuss hot new titles and sometimes do really short book talks.
Current Topics & Titles involves our entire public service staff. Each circulation staff member is required to add five titles per week to the "Staff Picks" display. Each staff member has developed a genre fiction reading list in an area of her choosing. Staff members are expected to be familiar with the library's new books list, with the best seller list and with reserve lists. And, every staff member takes a turn on the radio. All staff members are also expected to perform reader's advisory service.Despite a desperately overcrowded building, we have done our best as far as new book displays. In addition to a large new book display located near both the entrance and the public service desks, we use several small bookcases for special displays such as "Staff Picks". In the Young Adult area, displaying new fiction along with the current issues of magazines has been very effective. In addition, a face-out books display and highly visible paperback spinners have helped us make the most of limited space. New children's books are on display at the entrance to the children's wing, as well as one the tops of the (child-size) shelves. Seasonal displays of children's books and of parent/teacher materials are extremely popular.
We use NoveList regularly both for collection development and reader's advisory. This tool is also available at all of our public Internet terminals. In addition, we invest heavily in print reader's advisory tools for our reference collection.
We spend approximately 9% of our book budget on our lease plan and are considering increasing this amount. In addition, we have identified 82 authors (adult, children's and young adult) from our vendor's "Automatically Yours" program whose books our patrons will "automatically" ask for. Titles from these authors are shipped immediately on publication. In addition, our Friends of the Library regularly purchase multiple copies of titles used in our Young Adult BookClub and adult book discussion groups.
Traditional methods of measuring service are used, including circulation of new books, length of reserve lists, and the number of booklists created. We have recently noticed an increase in the number of people who ask for reader's advisory and in those who patronize the "Staff Picks" display.