Portion Size Me: A Kid-Driven Family Plan to a Healthier Family, Alexandria & Marshall Reid - $16.99

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1 Selection Assignment - Books to Purchase Cammi Carpenter Library Journal April 1, 2012 The Book of Gardening Projects for Kids - $19.95 Free-Range Chicken Garden - $19.95 Portion Size Me: A Kid-Driven Family Plan to a Healthier Family, Alexandria & Marshall Reid - $16.99 $56.89 April 15, 2012 Mirrors: Reflections in Style, Paula Phipps - $45 Same-Day Resume, Third Edition - $9.95 Occupational Outlook Handbook, $19.95 The Forgetting Tree, Tatjana Soli - $25.99 $ May 1, year subscription to HGTV Magazine - $20 for 10 issues Phantom, Jo Nesbo - $28.95 Diares, George Orwell - $39.95 Piggy Banks to Paychecks, Angie Mohr - $19.95 $ Publisher s Weekly April 9, 2012

2 Dirt: A Story About Gardening, Mothering, and Other Messy Business, Susan Senator - $14.99 $14.99 April 23, 2012 Angry Birds: 50 True Stories of the Fed Up, Feathered, and Furious, National Geographic -$13.95 (Price not quoted in PW, I found it on Amazon) The Gift of Pets: Stories Only a Vet Could Tell, Bruce R. Colston - $25.99 The Mammoth Book of Steampunk - $13.95 $53.89 April 30, 2012 Awaken Your Child s Financial Genius: Why A Students Work for C Students, Robert T. Kiyosaki - $16.95 Cigar Box Guitars: The Ultimate DIY Guide for the Makers and Players of the Handmade Music Revolution, David Sutton - $29.95 Cooking for the Man Cave: What to Eat When Kicking Back with Family and Friends - $14.99 Outdoor Parents, Outdoor Kids: A Guide to Getting Your Kids Active in the Great Outdoors, Eugene Buchanan - $19.95 Blackout: Book 3 of the Newsflesh Trilogy, Mira Grant - $9.99 (If I were purchasing books for real I would buy this entire trilogy.) $91.83 May 7, 2012 Dinner: A Love Story: It All Begins at the Family Table, Jenny Rosenstrach - $27.99 The Mini Farming Guide to Vegetable Gardening: Self-Sufficiency for Asparagus to Zucchini, Brett L. Markham - $14.95 Battleborn, Claire Watkins - $25.95 The Way Back Home, Barbara Freethy - $7.99 $76.88

3 May 21, 2012 The Black Isle, Sandi Tan - $24.99 Hostage, Elie Wiesel - $25.95 Vlad, Carlos Fuentes - $17.95 The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep: Simple Solutions for Kids from Birth to 5 Years, Harvey Karp - $25.99 $94.88 May 28, 2012 The Take-Charge Patient: How You Can Get the Best Medical Care, Martine Ehrenclou - $19.95 The Natural Building Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to Integrative Design and Construction, Jacob Racusin - $59.95 Five Seasons, Chris H. Olsen - $24.95 So Good They Can t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, Cal Newport - $25.99 The Greater Journey, David McCullough - $20 $ Total: $749.55

4 Selection Assignment Paper After reading through the assignment instructions and getting a feel of the community I am selecting books for I decided that making a list would be the most effective way to get started. I made a list of the items I wanted to look for, a list of types of items I did not want to choose and some notes on who uses the collections and in what capacity. I compiled the following list: The population is young only 9% 65 or older Large usage by ethnic groups - Asian, Russian, Persian and Spanish, but 75% speak English No foreign language books, no computer books, no audio visual materials, no best selling fiction Seekers - info collectors with specific areas of interest (college students) How-to-ers - practical info to accomplish a specific task - Car repair, home improvement, parenting, investments. Enjoyers and Builders enjoy browsing and reading. Recreational reading Business, Parenting, Career building, Home decoration, Cooking Next, I decided I needed to find the journals to select the materials from. Thankfully the library I work at has paper subscriptions to Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. I decided to use issues of these two journals from April and May I looked through each journal page by page and began to realize what a fun and time consuming job collection development can be. When selecting books I kept referring back to my list above.

5 I decided that my top priority was non-fiction books. Since best selling fiction is purchased by a separate person I decided not to focus on best sellers. However, I did choose some fiction books that are not best sellers. I really wanted to gear my purchasing toward the patrons that like do it yourself projects around the house. I also picked some books that have to do with parenting. I did not choose the standard parenting books though. I found many good books that were new angles of parenting such as how to teach your children good financial skills. I also picked books that were for the parents and children, for example I chose a book about getting kids involved in outdoor activities and another book that would help parents get their children to sleep. I felt that by purchasing more non-fiction books I would be targeting more than one of the most common user type groups. The non-fiction items will target the how-to-ers as well as the people that like to browse. These books also have the potential to be helpful to patrons doing research. Also, non-fiction can definitely be considered recreational reading, depending on the reader. For me, non-fiction is often recreational. I felt that by selecting more non-fiction books than fiction I would contribute to the well rounding of the library s collection. The main reason I decided not to purchase very many fiction books is because I felt that the collection might be too overloaded with them. I do not know for sure because I am not familiar with the library s collection but I see how this could happen. Since the bestsellers are purchased centrally I would imagine that they are fairly well stocked. This means that it falls to the librarians of each branch to make sure other genres of books are purchased. With the economy in its current state and budgets suffering I decided to spend all the money. I am of the philosophy that if the money is given to the library to purchase books you should spend every possible penny on materials. I ended up leaving 45 cents unspent. This was

6 the closest I could get to spending the entire $750. To be perfectly honest I did end up picking one bestselling book because it was the right price. I had $20 and some change left and it cost $20, so I went with it. I figured that having an additional copy of a bestseller is never a bad idea. When I started looking for books to purchase I had every intention of selecting books that would appeal to people of different ethnicities. They way I planned to accomplish this task was by selecting books translated from other languages or set in other countries. This proved to be very difficult. I was able to select some books translated from Spanish and French as well as some set on other countries, but not to the extent that I wanted to. After thinking about it I decided that in the end these patrons will probably be interested in the same types of materials as patrons that we do not consider of a different ethnicity. Even though I was not able to find exactly what I wanted to satisfy the needs of these patrons I think that by just keeping them in my mind as I selected books helped me make some better choices. Since the population is pretty young I did not worry about not being able to find any large print books. In the two journals I used for this assignment I did not see this option. It is important that the library has a large print collection, but I did not select any. Another category of books that I selected from is career building books. I thought that with the job market in the current slump some books having to do with finding or being happy in a job would be valuable additions to the collection. I also decided to purchase a one year subscription to HGTV Magazine. I thought that this magazine would fit the needs of some users very well. I realize that the money to purchase the materials is one time money, but I think that having a one year subscription is better than nothing.

7 Overall, this was a fun and eye opening assignment. I knew that selecting materials would not be easy and I am so happy that we were able to gain some firsthand experience.