Future Dates & Training Opportunities
January 27, 2023 at 10 am – State Library Survey Workday at Scott County Library/Registration Link
March 4, 2022 – KASL Connect & Learn West District Workshop/Registration Link
Consulting
By Richard Brookman
KASL Connect & Learn West District Workshop
Hello Librarians!
We invite you to connect and learn with other librarians in Ulysses, Kansas on March 4th.
This workshop is open to school librarians, public librarians and staff, and friends of libraries.
-Come meet author, Cindy Cook-Grant and illustrator, Beth Arnold-Demont as they share about their books featuring Gus the Therapy dog and more!
-Learn about hosting a Fairy Tale Fair at your library!
-Lunch will be served!
-Connect with and learn from Richard Brookman (SWKLS) about book challenges and Kansas content curricular standards!
See flyer for details! March will be here before you know it so register today! Click on the flyer or here https://forms.gle/5BsJ5Ncyh8pDujUW6 to register.
Questions?
Contact Tammy Barb: tbarb@usd214.org or Jessica Dearden: jdearden@usd466.org
Early Childhood Transition Task Force
An Early Childhood Transition Task Force is being created with Executive Order 23-01. The task force will include representatives from a fairly board catagory. The Director of Appointments showed interest in considering librarians that might be interest.
If you are interested follow this link to the Initial Application. The task force won’t be included in the drop-down menu, but individuals can select “open to any board/commission” and they’ll note that it’s for the task force.
Cataloging, Collection Development, and ILL
By Sara Wilson
Collection Development Inspiration
Adult Fiction
Children’s & YA Fiction
In literary news . . .
What’s Hot and What’s Not
It’s state reports time, and although we may all be knee-deep in statistics right now, here are some statistics for you to relax with that someone else has put together. 🙂 Publisher’s Weekly recently published statistics that they were able to pull from NPD Bookscan, a company that tracks book sales across the U.S. Here is a breakdown of what’s hot and what’s not, in today’s book marketplace.
According to 2022’s report, the most popular adult fiction genres were Romance, with a 52.4% increase in sales, Fantasy, with a 17.4% increase, and Horror, with an 8.7% increase. Following closely behind the leaders were Suspense/Thriller, Graphic Novels, and General Fiction. Action/Adventure, Classics, Mysteries, and Sci-Fi didn’t fare so well, with sales of these genres in the negatives.
Nonfiction took a nosedive as a whole in 2022, with every nonfiction sub-genre except Travel (which had a sales increase of 13.4%) reporting negative sales. The hardest hit was History/Law/Political Science with -20.8%. According to Publisher’s Weekly, “The big slide in history/law/political science was due in part [to] the lack of a huge bestseller to match 2021’s million-copy-selling American Marxism by Mark R. Levin” (Milliot, 2023, p. 12).
If these trends continue, it looks like it may be honeymoon season, as far as literature is concerned. Love and travel are where it’s at. It’s a good time to stock up your romance section with the latest from popular authors like Colleen Hoover, Meghan Quinn, and Lucy Score. You might also want to make sure your travel guides are up to date for all those with cabin fever, itching for a getaway. Beach read time will be here before you know it!
Milliot, J. (2023). Romance was hot in 2022. Publisher’s Weekly, 270(03), 12.
Board Games Can Be Cataloged!
Would you like to check your board games out to your patrons, but you don’t know how to catalog them or can’t find any quality records to copy? Send them my way! Board games can be cataloged and I would be happy to take care of that for you. Just fill out a cataloging request and send them on the courier, the same way you would DVDs, CDs, or print materials and I’ll take care of the rest. 🙂
For VERSO Users . . .
From VERSO Product Manager Rae Schneider:
The video and annotated PowerPoint from the January Talks with Ted Q&A session have been posted. They are available both in VERSO (Support Pages / VERSO) and on the Auto-Graphics Portal.