Book Buying Survey 2008: Pushing CIRC with E-Service

A flock of hot new titles has just landed at the library. You could stand in the stacks and shout about it, print up an announcement and set your assistant to licking 10,000 stamps, or hope that word of mouth will get things moving.

Or you could rely on the wizardry of the Internet to communicate the news quickly and easily to your entire community at once.

Service is at the heart of library work, and as shown by LJ's latest annual book-buying survey of public libraries nationwide, e-service is at the heart of current efforts to maximize library use through more, and more direct, communication with patrons. Nearly four out of five respondents—and all respondents serving populations of 500,000 or more—report offering some sort of e-service to facilitate these conversations. Ranging from simple feedback features on the web site to brave new experiments in blogging, the e-services cited are revolutionizing the way librarians and patrons talk to one another.

LJ has been conducting its book-buying survey since 1998 and since 1999 has focused on presenting results from the LJ 100, public libraries distributed evenly throughout the country by size and type. Each year, a handful of libraries drop out and make room for others, but this year saw a turnover of about half the respondents. That makes the outright comparison of last year's and this year's statistics somewhat less helpful, but the survey did accomplish two things.

First, even with the new blood, it clearly echoed trends in budgets, spending, and circulation that LJ has seen shaping up over the last several surveys. Second, responses to a freshly minted question about online initiatives designed to track patron interest suggested not only where U.S. public libraries have been in the last year but where they are going.

After a rough patch in the early 2000s, LJ has watched materials budgets rise gently, with a 2.18% increase on average reported in this survey. Spending on AV and electronic products keeps burgeoning, even as the book budget shifts firmly in favor of fiction over nonfiction, a transition first noted in 2005. This year, fiction claimed an average 55% of the budget—the biggest chunk yet—and about one in four respondents claimed that fiction expenditures were growing (see “What's Up at Public Libraries,” p. 37).

As also noted as early as 2005, how-to and crafts titles have upped their public library profile, rising with cooking to a place of honor on the charts—right behind perennially top-ranked medicine/health in terms of circulation and expenditures (see “Nonfiction That Pops,” this page). True, current events titles keep surging, but the fun factor motivates a large share of library borrowing. “I think more people are visiting libraries for leisure, and thus arts/crafts and cookery books are very popular, more as hobbies than for practical reasons,” observes Desiree Bongers, Ripon PL, WI.

Circulation, which has been booming over the last several surveys, grew among this year's respondents at a rate of 2.5% on average; only 22% of respondents reported decreased borrowing. Bigger book budgets and hence a bigger selection of books helped create the upswing, but the top reason given was increased promotion. Promotional tools used by this year's respondents ranged from simple posters to newspaper columns and radio shows, but the exciting news is how important e-services have become in marketing the library and helping it move books, audiobooks, DVDs, and more.

By far the most popular e-service is the “Ask the Librarian” feature, entertained by nearly half of all respondents and nearly all respondents serving populations of 500,000 or more. But e-newsletters aren't far behind. Nearly four in ten respondents pass along news and reviews via the Internet, with half or more of all libraries serving populations 25,000 and beyond taking advantage of this technology.

News, Job Opportunities, Library Account, Library Programs and Events, New Additions to the Collection—these are the components of @ the Library, the e-newsletter sent out weekly by the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (PLCHC). The 6680 patrons signed up so far can pick the components they want. Similarly, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's e-newsletter, designed especially as a donor perk, delivers book advisories only in categories the recipient specifies. Hence the advantage of the e-newsletter over a paper version: it can be tailored to meet patron needs, making for individualized service without too much sweat.

Like their print counterparts, most e-newsletters feature the library's programs and services. Unlike print, they can use the tricks of cyberspace to amplify the information provided and draw in patrons further. “We try to use lots of links to direct people back to our own web page,” comments Allison Aiken, Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, NC, of the library's e-newsletter, which goes out monthly to 4000 subscribers.

Staff reviews are integral to most e-newsletters, but sometimes the task of filling up cyberspace with all those rants and raves can be a little taxing. For the short-staffed or weary, there's help. Among respondents offering e-newsletters, about half rely on NoveList's NextReads subscription service. Introduced in March 2006, NextReads provides 22 monthly or bimonthly e-newsletters in categories ranging from romance to history and current events. Each offers ten to 15 titles, both current and backlist, chosen and annotated by four MLS bibliographers. Though licensed through EBSCO, these e-newsletters can be branded with the library's logo.

Room to advertise library services and programming is afforded by the upgraded NextReads 2.0 software, and in fact librarians need not simply pass along the proffered lists but can edit them as they please, subtracting titles not in the collection and adding their own favorites. According to NoveList founder Duncan Smith, over 90% of NextReads subscribers retool the e-newsletters. Houston PL (HPL), TX, for instance, uses NextReads software to devise its Genealogy, Month of..., and Upcoming HPL Events e-newsletters from scratch while modifying 18 other NextReads e-newsletters to suit its needs.

A quick look at Houston's subscription rates show just how customized this service can be. Among the 4300 NextReads e-newsletters the library sends out, Thrillers and Suspense is read by 359 patrons and the newly introduced Kids' Books by 31. Such focused treatment serves patrons well while effectively highlighting the collection.

Another great way to push books is by blogging. Overall, only about 10% of this year's respondents take the time, but consider libraries serving populations 50,000 and more and the percentage jumps to about 25%. Blogging for a Good Book, launched in April 2007 by the Williamsburg Regional Library, VA, has proved a real boon to circulation. “All of the titles we blog about are circulating, even the older and perhaps more obscure ones,” observes adult services director Barry Trott.

Initially, bloggers came from the inner sanctum of readers' advisory (RA), with each serving as blog editor for one week and posting Monday through Friday. Soon, other members of adult services demanded to get into the act, as did folks from youth, technical, and outreach services.

The upshot? Blogging has further strengthened the library's famed RA culture and helped merchandise the entire collection, allowing staffers to highlight older favorites like John Cowper Powys's A Gastonbury Romance, which has circulated more in the first six months of this fiscal year than it did all of last year. In addition, blogging has given a real voice to patrons, who not only comment on blogged titles but offer their own reading suggestions—so much so that comments on the blog have begun outnumbering posts. “We are definitely having conversations with readers,” concludes Trott.

Even for libraries already boasting advisory-rich web sites, blogs serve a purpose by taking the conversation in a whole new direction. Says Sally Kramer about Turning the Page, the blog created by PLCHC, “Obviously, blogs have that chatty, conversational tone, and multiple reading recommendations on the same theme can be used in a different way than traditional subject bibliography recommendations.” Posted in over 30 categories, Cincinnati's blogs have ranged from “Visions of Winter,” on reading John Ashbery at year's end, to “Three Flavors of Apocalypse,” on notable sf titles about the end of everything.

For some librarians, the blog has shown itself to be a promising tool for reeling in new or underserved audiences. When Michelle R. Sampson arrived as director of Wadleigh Memorial Library, Milford, NH, in 2005, she immediately saw that teenagers had no real space of their own and set about making one. Then she asked circulation assistant Katie Spofford to build up programming and a web presence for teens. Spofford's successes include not only the well-publicized Dance Dance Revolution: Dance Off Your Fines program and a MySpace page (also featured by about a half-dozen other libraries in this year's survey) but the spanking new YA Lit Blog, which Spofford alter ego Librarygirl updates weekly. She even decks out the page with trailers for new books.

Just as librarians are spending more time talking online to patrons, so patrons are spending more time talking online to librarians—and to one another. For instance, reports Kathleen Sullivan, patrons at Phoenix PL can create and share their own online lists , complete with snappy comments and links back to the catalog. “Isn't this fun?” says Sullivan. “It's a new way of social networking.” Similarly, patrons at the Mountain Regional Library System, part of Georgia Library PINES Evergreen System, can use PINES software to create and share “bookbags,” or reading lists. Library director Donna W. Howell says she'll share a few titles in her email to patrons. “But often we never see the lists.”

Look at those lists, and you'll notice more than titles. In effect, you'll see patron reviews, something libraries are experimenting with nationwide. For instance, Las Vegas–Clark County Library District, NV (not one of this year's respondents), currently has a stockpile of 2000 patron reviews, seeded with Pearl's Picks and New York Times reviews of best sellers to spark interest. Log in, locate a title's record, and click the Add a Review button. It's that simple, and it's for everyone (not just patrons), though the library does provide a required barcode and PIN for reviewer identification. “We wanted more patron input,” explains Las Vegas's Lauren Stokes of the library's decision to go this route.

Luckily for Las Vegas, when it opted for patron reviews, its new automation vendor, Innovative Interfaces Inc., already had a blueprint. Another blueprint for the future: the Library Corporation's Indigo launches this spring. Indigo allows patrons not only to create and share reviews but to index RSS feeds, create personal lists, save and promote searches, and browse onscreen carousels.

For those who aren't interested in creating lists or reviews, there's always tagging. No, LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL), a favorite tool at the Morris County Lib., NJ, says Mark Anderson, doesn't permit patrons to add tags—yet. But as noted by LibraryThing creator Tim Spalding (see Movers & Shakers, LJ 3/15/08), “The big request is to make LTFL more 'social'—to allow patrons to interact with it, not just reap the benefits of the social system of LibraryThing.com. One way or another, features along those lines will be a part of LTFL in the coming year.” So stay tuned.

As of now, U.S. public libraries are going strong—partly because librarians keep building solid bridges to their communities. Some of those bridges go straight out over the Internet, and in the years to come they'll only get busier. This year's book-buying survey gave us a hint of what's to come. We've seen the future, and its name is e-service.