Have you ever wondered where your library gets all of its books? They must magically spawn there on the shelf, right?
I hate to be the one to break it to you but there are no Book Elves that magically summon all the library books.
Or, rather, there are people who summon the books, but it's a lot less magic and a lot more reading reviews and putting in order requests. These people are selectors and are responsible for collection development for their sections. Recently, I was made selector for my library's adult manga collection.
Before I officially became a selector, I had already been helping one of our other selectors with a project. My coworker, I'll call them A-chan, is the selector for the Teen graphic and manga collection, and they asked for my opinion on the manga in the Adult collection and if I thought there was any that could be moved from Adult to Teen. Since they didn't have the time to look through the collection, I checked out several piles of manga and read through them over a break. In total, we moved 26 series from the Adult collection to Teen, having found that they'd be appropriate and interesting for younger readers. And we were right-- as soon as we put Mob Psycho 100, a comedy series, on the Teen shelf, a patron checked out every volume we had.
Soon after this, my manager, who at the time selected both adult manga and graphic novels, asked if I'd like to take over selecting adult manga. I've been a manga enthusiast for years, so this prospect excited me. December of 2023 was my first month of picking manga and I've been keeping my eye out for books that would be good to add to the collection.
So-- what's the process of selecting material for the library?
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Trade magazines like Booklist have reviews for general
materials-- most of what you see at the library has
probably been reviewed in publications like this. |
First, it's finding it. For more general books, like nonfiction, fiction, and children's material, reviews can be found in publications like Booklist (https://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist) and Kirkus Reviews (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/). For more specialized material, like manga, I have to look for specialized reviews. Sites like myanimelist.net and anilist.co are great for up to-the-minute reviews from readers and for tracking new and upcoming releases. Professional reviews can be found online on MyAnimeList and Anime News Network (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/) and in print in the one remaining anime and manga magazine in America, Otaku USA (https://otakuusamagazine.com/). Knowing what to select is easier if you're familiar with the area already -- I was already into manga before becoming a selector, so I had a place to start. This is all to say if you're a library selector, make sure you familiarize yourself with your area, even if it's not within your personal interests. It makes it a lot easier to know what people are going to want to read if you're not blindfolding yourself and throwing darts for next month's selection.
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| Reading Otaku USA Magazine |
Before I started getting new books, I had to find out what we had in the collection already. To do this I made a spreadsheet of all books in the catalogue. The list then was expanded to include the total number of circulations and the number of circulations in 2023. This helped me gauge how popular individual volumes are, which suggests to me which series should be continued and what should even be weeded.
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| Click to enlarge |
I found that among our most popular series were Kakegurui: Compulsive Gambler, Spy x Family, Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku, and Chainsaw Man. This gives me an idea not only of what to continue selecting in the future (in fact, the first book I selected was a replacement for a missing volume of Chainsaw Man), but what genres and themes are most interesting to our patrons. Drama, action, and romance top the list, followed by a nonfiction memoir, slice of life, and horror.
This list also helped me weed material that hadn't been checked out for too long-- one series totaled over 20 volumes but had barely been checked out, with most volumes never even circulating once, so it was weeded, making room on our sadly very small bookcase. I only have so much room and I have to keep adding new books to the collection, so some things have to go. This is all part of collection development-- deciding what should and shouldn't be in your area of the collection. Sometimes you have to kill your darlings like that. Weeded books get put in the Friends of the Library book sale-- so make sure you check the sales, that book you love might someday be there waiting for you.
Now that I've found what I have and what I no longer need, I'm free to start selecting what I should add. Our library orders most of our books through the distributor Baker & Taylor (https://www.baker-taylor.com/) and this is the exciting part-- getting ready to order my books.
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| A book page on Baker & Taylor |
Here I can search for books and add them to my cart. Carts are then transferred to the librarian who handles the actual purchase-- all I have to do is choose what I want and send them on to the purchaser. This system may differ between libraries. When the books arrive at the library from the distributor, I decide what the spine label should be and pass them on to the cataloger, who then passes them on to processing to get them ready for going on the shelf.
More about manga
When I told one of my friends, best known to this blog as my Research Assistant N, about this job, I was asked a good question. "What does 'adult' manga entail?"
Manga is published according to demographic:
shounen and
shoujo for teen/young adult boys and girls, and
seinen and
josei for adult men and women. Some
shounen and
shoujo are aimed at an older teen/young adult audience that puts them into my territory rather than the Teen selector's. In English, the term "adult" manga suggests "adult" themes of violence and sexuality, which, just like in Western graphic novels, do exist in manga. However, manga is a very popular form of media in Japan with hundreds of topics, so there's something for everyone. Many
seinen and
josei manga deal with adult life-- jobs, family, and things adults experience that wouldn't appeal to younger readers. Very few kids want to read about working in an office. Likewise,
shounen and
shoujo focus on topics younger readers relate to-- school and coming of age stories are common, even in fantastical settings.
Since my area is for adults, I focus primarily on seinen and josei manga and some shounen and shoujo aimed at an older, young/new adult audience. As I mentioned above when talking about my analysis of material already in the collection, I found that action and drama are our most popular genres. This information tells me what to pay attention to-- otherwise we would all just order whatever interests us personally. There's an old saying in broadcasting that "many a station has gone bankrupt playing the owner's favorite music." The same goes for choosing books.
Sometimes a series I find would work better for the Teen collection-- that was the issue earlier last year when my coworker and I started going through the Adult collection and finding series that fit better for younger readers. Sometimes it's the opposite, recently I was given a book my coworker had initially intended for Teen only to realize it fit better in the adult collection.
That's about all I have about selecting for now, though I can go more in depth in the future if anyone is interested. Next time, I'm going to write a review of a manga that's absolutely captured my heart, Frau Faust by Kore Yamazaki, and later I will be reporting on my experiences cataloging every cemetery in my home county.
Until then, happy reading!
