Thanks so much to the 100+ people who filled out my survey about selecting and familiarizing yourself with books! Here’s the breakdown of respondents by grade levels, so you can see that most serve grades 9-12, followed by grades 5-8, followed by K-4. The “other” responses included Pre-K students.
Selecting Books
By Reviews
For selecting books by reviews, respondents most often use:
- Print magazines
- Sites that curate multiple professional reviews
- Book-related websites
- Online versions of print sources
- Professional blogs.
Least used:
- Online video reviews
- Databases
Responses in the “other” category included:
- Social media like Twitter/X, Instagram, and Facebook (“I hear about 90% of the fiction titles and many of the nonfiction titles I purchase on Twitter”)
- Book blogs (like Reading Middle Grade)
- Author sites/social media
- Local public libraries and their lists/catalogs
- Literary award winners and nominees
- The New York Times Book Review
- Indie Next List from Indiebound
Other Ways to Select Overall
In other ways to select books, almost everyone buys:
- Books recommended by students or faculty
- Books from popular series or books written by popular authors
Least used other sources include:
- Sales reps
- Bookfairs
In the “other” category, sources mentioned include:
- Book awards and “best of” lists, either from participating on a state committee or lists on “YALSA awards, National Book Awards, Pulitzer, Carnegie, NYT best sellers’ lists, etc.”
- Titlewave “Best of” lists
- Seeing/reading ARCs
- Webinars from book-related organizations like Booklist
- Weekly lists of newly-published books
- Nonprofit book/reading organizations
- Social media
Top Two Selection Sources
When it comes to respondents’ “top two” sources for selecting books, we are a diverse bunch! I parsed the responses, and the most frequent responses included:
- Print magazines or other review sources/sites (cumulative or not)
- Student or other patron requests
Top print sources mentioned, by frequency, are:
- School Library Journal (27)
- Booklist (20)
- Kirkus (7)
- Horn Book (6)
- New York Times Book Review (4)
Top cumulative review sites were:
See the end of this post for a full list of specific sources mentioned.
Familiarizing Ourselves With Books
Familiarization Methods Overall
When it comes to familiarizing ourselves with books, top methods included:
- Using new books in displays
- Reading book jackets and back-of-book summaries
- Skimming new books
- Reading new books
Least popular included:
- Reading reviews on social media/ blogs/ YouTube/ etc.
- Reading social media posts
Answers in the “other” category included:
- “We get 30+ books on a biweekly basis so that simply isn’t possible!”
- “Read the ones that don’t seem like they’d be popular so I can \”sell\” them!”
- Give books to students and request feedback
- “Read specific ones with an eye toward adding them to the HAISLN list.”
Top Two Familiarization Methods
The most popular methods for familiarizing ourselves with books include:
- Reading
- Skimming
- Reading book jackets
- Reading summaries
Interesting answers given by one person each included:
- Watching author videos
- Reading ARCs
- Social media
- Ingram Advance
- Checking trigger warning sites
Selected comments:
- “An interesting follow-up survey could be about people’s feelings on paying for acquisitions services. Ingram is coming out with a paid service that will supposedly select books for your school.”
- “I familiarize myself with books as part of the evaluation process.”
- “I’m a slow reader so skimming is as good as it gets unless I think the book will be popular or if it’s a book we’re choosing for book club.”
- “I just look at the covers. 🙂 I know what I’m ordering and know what to expect when those boxes arrive; I read summaries as I order and listen to from webinars; I have lists ready of who requested what and I set aside those titles I know I should read for readers’ advisory.”
- “I read a lot! And I skim the ones I don’t fully read. I handle every book I purchase.”
- “I catalog all of our new books; Follett’s cataloging often leaves much to be desired, so I usually do a little digging with each book to create a good record. I also do weekly book talks during our all upper school gathering where I promote new books in the library and our new books libguide weekly.”
- “I use the 10-minute read technique. Secondly, I enhance the resource records when processing, during which I read the entire cover information and perhaps the first few pages.”
- “When I order them I familiarize myself with what they are about. I read some, but there is no way to read them all!!”
- “I use Titlewave, especially Kirkus Review that usually includes information such as “characters cue white” or “protagonist is Southeast Asian.” I also like that it has multiple reviews that include age ranges. Reading the books is also helpful although I’m a slow reader and there are many books! I tend to let the popular books sell themselves and read or read excerpts of the books that might not be as popular but that I know will be good.”
- “Read the book. If I like it, I read the entire book. Otherwise, I stop when I know enough to book talk it to students.”
- “Sadly I do very little of this, other then trying to match the titles with the content I saw when reading the reviews.”
Resources Mentioned
These are resources mentioned in the survey, as well as resources from an earlier query by Sarah Davis of Viewpoint School (CA), who compiled this list.
This is a great post! I’m looking forward to exploring some new sources!
Love this! Thanks for curating such an amazing list of resources, Rebecca! I’m off to explore as well!
I’m glad if it’s helpful–I found new sources, too!
Great summary of our shared experiences!