Surviving the Challenged Book Process

Well, I've survived my first challenged book. I'm not going to mention it specifically as this post is more my thoughts on the process. This challenge was unanticipated because the work was a non-fiction and the challenger felt that it had no historical value. I was at a loss because I am no history buff and the book was huge. I did find several Amazon.com reviews that listed, with page numbers the historical errors, which I was able to verify whether or not the book did indeed have (and even note changes from the print to the digital editions) and then I would fact check using outside sources.

I remember being at the desk with the challenger approached a co-worker regarding the book. The librarian had suggested he contact the publisher and he responded, "you are the librarians and it is your job to make sure the books in the [non-fiction] collection are accurate." He has a point. Collection development is all about making sure informational works come from authoritative sources with editors that do the fact checking and make sure the copy is grammatically correct. Editors are supposed to make sure a work "flows" logically and that the writing style matches the intent of the work as a whole.

Then come the reviewers. I can't tell the number of times a selector has asked me if a book I'm recommending or requesting on behalf of a patron has been reviewed, and if so, from which publication, because they ask me every time. The selectors are fanatical about it. And as it turned out, the two big reviewers that we use, Publisher's Weekly and BookList, did not have a review of the book, whether good or bad. Nor did Library Journal. Now it begs the question (from me), this was a popular book, it was on the best seller list a few times, why didn't it get reviewed? I mean, come on, it's a history book. (That's not to say the book didn't get any press. It did. But getting press is different from being reviewed.)

So, I had no guidance from the professional literature. I had a bunch of gripes from some Amazon reviewers who at best could be considered history buffs (I have nothing against them, it's just the "Wikipedia question", you know?). I began reading. Wonder of wonders I learned something. And yet, the errors existed! WHAT DO I DO? I had the conundrum of what expectation should a reasonable patron have of the books in the collection? Is it reasonable to think a book could have say 10% errors? Or should a book have less than 1% errors?

This was a popular history book, in that it was written for the mass market and not written for academia. Should the book stay on the shelves, errors and all, as this public library collects popular works? What about if we were the type of librarians who "edited" a book. (This was known to happen "in the day." I've seen books that librarians have edited.) Would we keep the book with errors annotated and corrected? What professional obligation do I have to both the history buff and the newly curious to ensure the book I provide on my shelf has merit to their information need? What professional obligation do I have to the author that the public have access to his work? In the words of Charlie Brown, arghhh!

I submitted my recommendation. It haunts me to this day. It's only been two days.

Resources for Teaching Copyright

I like the list, but not the formatting of the blog where I found the original post. Mad props to them for collecting this list, but I'm going to recreate the list for myself.

• Copyright Advisory Network- brought to you by ALA's Office of Information Technology Policy. Geared toward librarians and copyright issues as pertains to the profession, an insightful quote on the homepage is "with copyright, there are no definitive answers." How deliciously evil sounding. Some nice resources on the page are: 
• The Copyright Genie
• the Fair Use Evaluator 
• the Is It Protected by Copyright Slider- (nice visual infographic)
• the Section 108 (of the US Copyright Code) Spinner
• and the Exceptions for Instructors eTool
• the Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers chart- created by Tech(nology) and Learning, a site owned by NewBay Media, which specializes in creating products for the K-12 education market, this chart breaks down what you are thinking of using (it's medium), how you can use it, and the fine prints according to media.
• The Creative Commons website- Want to move beyond the restrictions of copyright? The CC can teach you how to put your stuff out there for use, while also protecting your right to make money off your stuff.
• The cute Cyberbee Copyright Classroom. Kind of simplistic, but an easy way to get started and explore the very basics of the issue with students using an interactive FAQ format.
• LoC's Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright- Flash based videos targeted toward younger teens present the info in comic style with story based examples.
• and finally, Teaching Copyright, a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a thorough curriculum for older teens.

learning the RC: Free to Read and Organizing Info

Someone doing research on why libraries are important to America and to democracy? Need some professional jargon on the confidentiality of patron records, responding to challenged material or need to explore how technology and RFID undermine privacy policy? Keep handy the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Manual (025.213 INT 2010). (Shouldn't there be a reverb to such a spectacular intro?) The Manual has three parts: an overview or history of the issue, a step by step breakdown of the sections of the Library Bill of Rights with an interpretation and history for each section, a discussion of policies as related to access to materials and confidentiality, a part on the ALA's Code of Ethics, and finally an action plan part on to prepare librarians entering into the political fray.

I would like to state for the record that I did not graduate MLIS school without having taken a cataloging course like all old timers seem to think. In fact, I took two. But they were on metadata schema such as Dublin Core and controlled vocabularies such as the Getty Vocabularies. No, I did not learn about MARC because we're heading toward RDA anyway and besides, I learned how to follow rules rather than memorize rules that were slated to be changed anyway. With that huff and puff said, I bring you the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules 2nd ed 1988 revision (025.32 ANG) (which RDA is based on anyway (note, I said "based" and not "copied"), but with updates to support the online environment). This thing is like a MLA or APA handbook, but for describing works instead of citing papers. Part I instructs the cataloguer what information to include when describing the works (how to describe a map being much different from how to describe a sound recording) and Part II instructs you on the formatting of those descriptions. See? Not rocket science. Just requiring a lot of attention to detail. Next!

Next being the much coveted four volume, wait, five volume 26th Edition Library of Congress Subject Headings (025.33 LIB 2003 v1-5). This is the sort of book you could just jump right in to begin browsing to see how the LC assigns subject headings. And this book is a real thesaurus in that it lists the Used For and Broader Term and Narrower Term entries! I would probably learn a lot by reading through the introductory material that discusses things like pattern headings and free-floating sub-divisions. Yes, I'm a nerd. Drool!