Here’s a blog post that could be fun for librarians to weigh in on: Critical Mass, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors, asks about the role of reviews in buying books that you “read.” I put ‘read’ in quotation marks because so many of FRL’s readers are librarians who buy books based on many indicators–collection profiles, patron requests, and yes, reviews–unrelated to personal preference. Yet we also buy books for ourselves–an interesting dualism.
You may have noticed that Free Range Librarian took a brief vacation last night. I was relieved to learn that it was a problem on Dreamhost’s end–the easiest kind to fix.
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Interesting you should ask this. I was just in a situation where I had to defend hands on looking at the childres’ books. I pulled two examples where the reviews were lacking. One was a Micheal Hague E title where a fairy had a rather large breast showing, and the other was a well written book with no reviews on boas for primary graders that showed one in the process of eating a cute little mousie. No I usually don’t talk baby talk, but I’m making a point about how some 7 or 8 year old might have emotionally responded to the photo. I’m not completely sure what the solution is. More reviews? Longer reviews? Probably yes to both. However, there is so much in a kid’s book that is not covered in reviews that I’m not sure it is possible to do without actually looking at the books. What do others think?