Let’s Talk About Books!
Posted February 12, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
This week I have one of the most fun projects that I’ve had since starting at Simmons! I get to talk about BOOKS! I know, I know, this is library school, shouldn’t this be a common thing? Actually, no, this is not a usual assignment. I don’t think I’ve actually had an assignment where I’ve gotten to wax poetic about books, genres, publishing, or anything of that nature since we talked about readers advisory waaaaayy back in my first semester when I was taking LIS 407: Information Sources and Services. This week is my Genre/Topic project for LIS 453: Collection Development and Management. For this project, I get to talk about a particular topic or book genre and discuss publishing trends, what’s hot and what’s not, popular books, any books that are going to be released as movies and/or TV shows in my genre, etc. Doesn’t that sound like fun? I’m excited for this project for a variety of reasons. First, as I mentioned earlier, I GET TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS! Like many others who came before me, and many who will come after me, one of the reasons why I wanted to be a librarian is because I like books. It’s not the only reason–I also like to do research, I like helping people, and I feel like the library is my home away from home, but a love of books and reading was definitely a part of it. I’m also excited for this project because it’s so different than other projects that I’ve done at Simmons. Maybe it’s just the classes I’ve chosen, but with the exception of a few times in LIS 407, I really haven’t gotten many opportunities to talk about books. While I appreciate all of the projects that I have done, and they have definitely helped me professionally, this is a project that I know I’ll have fun doing.
We got to choose from a long list of book genres and other topics for this project. I say “other topics” because as this is Collection Development and Management, a library’s collection doesn’t just consist of books, it also consists of other items such as board games, video games, movies, television shows, and apps (all of which were topics that we could choose from on the list). For my project, I selected “Contemporary Romance” as my genre. I really wanted to write about books, so I decided to choose a book genre that I felt was super different than what I usually work with in my day-to-day library job (I work in an academic library that focuses on the health sciences) as well as different than what I did for any book-related assignments that I may have had earlier on at Simmons, and a genre that I could have fun with. When I read for fun, I don’t tend to stick to one genre–I will read anything that I think will be interesting and grabs my attention. I really didn’t know a lot about the romance novel industry as a whole before starting this project, so I’ve been learning a lot.
This class has been so exciting so far! I know I’m going to have a great time finishing up this project, and I’m looking forward to my upcoming projects in this class!