Week 5 Prompt: The Conundrums of Reviewing

 

Ebook only books, which are increasingly popular (especially in the romance genre) see little to no reviews in professional publications unless they have a big name author. How does this affect collection development?

 

It would be difficult to decide to purchase an Ebook for a collection if you haven’t read the book and can’t find many reliable reviews on it. I would imagine that affects library collections quite a bit. How else does one decide on pieces for collections development?

 

I have posted two more documents in the week five files. One is two reviews of an ebook only romantic suspense novel, one from a blog and one from amazon. Look over the reviews - do you feel they are both reliable? How likely would you be to buy this book for your library?

 

Both reviews seem like they were written by genuine readers of the book. One liked it, the other not so much. When you consider what is being reviewed—a simple, cute romance story—it doesn’t take Roger Ebert to tell you whether it was really amazing or not. Whether I would by it or not depends on my library; how many books in this genre do we already have? Do we have a cute Christmas setup in need of more material? The other question is how many copies to buy. It is an inexpensive book, so it couldn’t hurt to buy one or two to put in circulation. People pretty much know what they’re getting into when they pick up a book with this premise.

 

The other document contains some reviews of Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt, an incredibly popular memoir. These reviews are all from professional publications, feel free to find more on your own I just nabbed a few from the Book Review Digest database for you. How do these reviews make you feel about the possibility of adding Angela's Ashes to your collection?

 

Every review is very positive and commends the author on his handling of the sometimes dark, depressing aspects of his life. The Library Journal even says his book was “impossible to put down.” I think this would be a great addition to any collection.

 

Do you think it's fair that one type of book is reviewed to death and other types of books get little to no coverage?

 

I suppose if you look at it objectively, it does seem unfair, in an “all books should be treated equally” sense. However, if you examine the content—for example, a unique autobiography detailing one man’s life, versus a chintzy romance with hundreds of other books almost identical to it—it makes sense that reviewers would rather spend their time dissecting the more unique of the two books.

 

How does this affect a library's collection?

 

I would imagine that library collections could be biased toward books that garner more reviews, simply because it is easier to determine the quality of those books. On the other hand, if a collections development librarian had an attitude like mine about the first question, it might not affect collections at all.

 

And how do you feel about review sources that won't print negative content?

 

I think that’s interesting. Personally, I would rather like to see the negative reviews, especially if I were deciding on books for a collection. But again, on the other hand, that might be one way to let readers decide for themselves whether they like the book rather than not having the option of reading it. Not printing negative reviews gives every book a fighting chance at selling well without a handful of negative opinions destroying it.

 

If you buy for your library, how often do you use reviews to make your decisions?

If not, how do you feel about reviews for personal reading, and what are some of your favorite review sources?

 

I actually almost always look at reviews before reading a book I haven’t heard of before or hasn’t been specifically recommended to me. If I am feeling spendy, I will go to Barnes and Noble and look at titles the staff recommend. They have the little cards sticking out under the titles with a snippet from the staff on why they liked the book. I’ll purchase a book if it comes recommended and the title and premise are appealing enough. For reading library books, Goodreads is my go-to. I typically would rather read the opinion of other average people like myself to see if I would like a book. The same goes for movies; I usually read user reviews before I go to critic reviews. And the nice thing is, Goodreads does hide spoilers so if a reviewer is less than judicious about their content it won’t ruin the book.