Fiction Acquisition/Fiction Management: : Education and Training

Citation

Harrison, K.C. (1999), "Fiction Acquisition/Fiction Management: : Education and Training", Library Review, Vol. 48 No. 6, pp. 47-47. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1999.48.6.47.4

Considering that fiction provides the bulk of public library issues, though not of stock, it is remarkable that over the years it has not been featured more in library literature. This slim volume is an attempt to redress the balance dealing, as it does, with educating and training library personnel about the problems associated with the acquisition and management of fiction stocks. It should be noted that the monograph is simultaneously published by the Haworth Press as The Acquisitions Librarian, Number 19, 1998.

Georgine Olson, the editor, is Outreach Services Manager of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Library and Regional Center in Fairbanks, Alaska. She has had previous experience in public libraries in Illinois, and has been busy in various public library activities in the United States. She is also the author of the first chapter of this book, which contains six other chapters on various themes associated with the provision of fiction. Joyce Saricks writes on selecting fiction in a medium‐sized public library and providing the fiction that patrons want. Janelle Zauha looks at book lease plans as an option for fiction provision in academic libraries, while Deborah Richey offers a selective review of censored, forbidden and underground Czech novelists from the 1960s to 1989.

A constant complaint about American library literature is that it is frequently so self‐centred as to have little relevance to librarians outside the United States. This criticism cannot be levelled against this volume. Although naturally American‐orientated, it is not aggressively so, and it can be said with some certainty that the chapters will be found of special interest to librarians and library managers wherever they are, who want to enhance their fiction collections and improve their services and assistance to readers.