Here’s How Librarians Choose What Goes on the Shelves
A breakdown of the criteria librarians in a public library use to decide what’s purchased, what stays, and what goes
Book banning is in the air again as self-important busybodies around the United States rail against parental choice, the expertise of teachers, and the professional duties of librarians. The spittle in the air is thick with ignorance and self-righteousness as the misinformed maraud against the freedom to read. Perhaps it’s once again time for a national read-around of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451?
Alas, no, I’m not going to use this space to clap back at those goons. No, here I would prefer to enliven the national conversation by enlightening the open-minded about what goes on in library work rooms when deciding what’s purchased, what stays, and what goes in library collections. Namely, what we librarians call “collection development.” Now, before I dive into it, I need to say that these thousand-or-so words cannot serve as a replacement for entire books written on the theory and practice of collection development, nor can it replace the classes librarians take during their graduate training. No, this will be more like an introduction to how librarians think about collections and why it’s so silly when we get a book challenge because a character says “damn” in a teen novel.
To start, let’s talk about scale. There are over a million books published around the world every year, which is to say, a lot. Large library systems tend to purchase books in multiple languages, and nearly all libraries also purchase audiobooks, music, movies, and more, in both physical and digital formats. Depending on their budget, a small rural library might purchase a hundred new items annually, whereas a large library system might get thousands. Either way, it’s clear that there’s already a huge amount of selection happening. Libraries do not purchase the majority of what is published every year. So how do they choose?
It’s complicated, but let’s reverse the problem a bit and let me tell you the kind of stuff public libraries tend not to purchase (we’ll stick with books to keep things manageable): Since we’re talking on a global scale, public libraries tend not to purchase books in languages that are not present and common in their communities. Mark this, the concept of communities with a library’s service area will be a recurring theme for the rest of this article. When it comes to fiction, public libraries tend not to purchase novels by unknown, un-reviewed authors. Going further, the smaller a library’s collection budget is, the lower the chance they’ll be buying titles miles beyond the bestseller lists of popular genres.
The story is much the same with non-fiction. Public libraries rarely go for very obscure titles or those that take an extremely deep or academic perspective on a topic — that’s what university libraries buy. So if you need a book on the thermodynamic properties of underwater banana farms, your local library is unlikely to stock it. Libraries with limited budgets will also refrain from buying limited editions, very expensive books, and other items that burn a huge budget-hole, are likely to get stolen, and/or may not get checked-out often. Which brings us to the next stop on the collection development tour: Popularity versus comprehensiveness.
The tension between what is popular and what a library collection should have has existed since public libraries began. Anna Gooding-Call delved into this topic in her Book Riot article, where she discussed the place of classics on library shelves. Generally speaking, bestsellers circulate a lot more than “classics” just as cookbooks circulate more than poetry, books on economics, and, well, nearly any other non-fiction book. Yet, libraries still buy poetry, which doesn’t circulate much at all. The truth is that with limited shelf space and budgets, the balance is usually tipped towards the latest James Patterson book versus a literary writer like Don DeLillo. Why? Because public library collections are, above all, for use. And despite the angst this creates among some readers, it’s hard to justify letting a book sit on the shelf untouched for ten years due to propriety. Library books aren’t for decoration, and public libraries aren’t archives.
That’s also why librarians are pretty much always “weeding” or pruning books from the collection — books that are in poor condition, no longer current, or haven’t circulated within some amount of time (that period usually depends on the section). Modern libraries also use specialized software to run reports using a variety of metrics that go beyond circulation. Non-library people are often shocked that libraries withdraw (read: remove) books from their collections at all (just as they’re shocked that they refuse donations), but the truth it’s totally logical. Libraries buy books all the time, so if they didn’t “weed” others, there would be no room to put the new ones. Why should a book on, for example, how to program a 40-year-old computer remain on the shelf? I say once again, the public library isn’t an archive.
But collection development isn’t a crap-shoot, either. Most libraries have a collection development policy that provides guidelines on book selection. If you’re interested in what that looks like, the Brooklyn Public Library has an outstanding Materials Selection Policy that outlines what the library sees as their objectives, who the community is, the role of different library sections, their view on preservation, my favorite section called “Methods and Criteria for Selection” (recommended reading, if you ask me), and very importantly, a procedure for challenging collection decisions. But before we get to that, I want to talk about community.
The intricate and interesting detail in his whole description of collection development is that while libraries have some general tendencies among them, they are also hyperlocal. This means that many public libraries will have a shelf of books by local authors, a section on regional history, books in uncommon languages, and idiosyncrasies in collections that can seem weird unless you know the area. Librarians are trained to respond to community needs and desires, and usually do their best to be responsive to patrons. And that returns us to book challenges.
Perhaps you got the idea when you started reading this article that I despised book challenges. In this you would be wrong. In reality, I see a materials challenge as no different from any feedback from customers, some is positive, some is critical, all is welcome. I remember years ago a parent approached me about nudity in a graphic novel that was shelved in the children’s area; I’d read the book before and the single instance of a mermaid’s breasts hadn’t stood out to me, but this mother was not happy about it. I appreciated that she was polite in sharing her concern and left the matter in my hands as the library manager. I consulted with my colleagues and supervisors, and we decided it would be best to relocate the book to the teen area.
Granted, some people would have wanted the book chucked out of the library completely. Fine, that’s a valid opinion for a non-librarian. But we don’t make our collection development decisions in a vacuum of breasts, curse words, and provocative themes. It is our professional responsibility to take a holistic view of a book, its subject and themes, shelving location, and overall place in the collection and the community. Moreover, the absurdity of “protecting the children” by calling on us to deprive the whole community of a book just so young Wendell doesn’t happen upon a single offending sentence out of a 250-page book, from a collection of 15,000, is lost on few of us.
In fact, it’s right up there with the absurdity of trying to ban a book that’s not actually in a library collection. But maybe a degree less mystifying than banning the award-winning graphic novel Maus because it has the word “damn” and a single naked mouse. To be clear, we’re talking about a book about THE HOLOCAUST — a genocide where people were gassed to death in showers, starved in concentration camps, and experimented on like lab rats.
So yes, challenge books, it’s part of a resident’s purview when interacting with their library. But remember, library books are selected and maintained based on professional experience and criteria, not by counting curse words, sex scenes, or naked body parts. So think about whether challenging a whole community’s access to a book is really worthwhile when there’s the equally strong option of taking care in what you or your child read.
