Old habits are hard to break, even for people who consciously work to be innovative.
We bought a number of display shelves two years ago. I was in charge of the layout and immediately arranged these marvelous slanted shelves in – aisles. Just like they were standard stacks. Wide aisles. Four feet wide and more in some cases, but aisles.
Display shelves should be used to build a display area, not as faux stacks. We have rearranged one set of three into a C shape ( | __ | ), forming a small room within a room, an area where fiction readers can wander around and examine the new fiction. In many ways, this is a return to the alcoves designed in the original Carnegie libraries.
We will soon be moving the new non-fiction to a similar arrangement, maybe an L ( | __ __ ), which will have the same effect within the larger room.
We will probably also make changes to our DVD / AV area, widening the aisles from four feet to six feet, making them display areas instead of aisles. In this case a change of degree may turn into a change of kind.
As we are also growing our YA area as a display area. No stacks, just shelves that can be easily browsed, chairs to sit in, good light and lots of room.
To a great extent, a librarian’s task to to build display areas where the collection can be highlighted. Items in stacks must be linked to the display collections, otherwise they will wither. New mysteries help move older titles by the same author. A book that is a singleton is much harder to promote and harder to justify keeping on the shelf.
Libraries can benefit from the long tail without maintaining extensive stacks IF they are part of a larger shared system / collection. Our library has about 120,000 items, but is part of a shared system that has over 3,000,000 items and a solid delivery system. We can afford to buy a book from a series, knowing that if it is popular, the older titles are available within a couple of days. If it is not used, then we know we don’t need to revisit the decision for a while.
Posted by neotradlibrarian 