What's the next one?

We work hard as librarians to make the library user friendly for our community, keeping personal preferences on the back burner. So I was particularly thrilled when one of our staff came to me a while back to tell me about another library that was adding the series number on the book to make it easy to find the right title. I realized my days of looking at the list in the beginning of the book, trying to decide if the list was ordered new to old or old to new were finally over. We added the plan to our ongoing list and we have been working the past few months to make it happen. Check out our newsletter for details.

Creating series is a hot thing in the book world, whether it is a mystery/thriller, science fiction/fantasy, or romance. It keeps readers coming back for more. At the same time, it creates quite a challenge for librarians as we so often miss the first in a series just because it is a new author with little buzz. We have to play catch up as so many of our readers are determined to read series in order, no if, ands or buts!

And if that isn't enough, publishers are now cross-pollinating series - main characters from 2 of an authors series meet in a very special book. We then face the challenge of which series to include it in.

But the most challenging for us and for readers is when the publisher and/or author decides to renumber the series. A recent example is the popular Magic Tree House series. There is a subseries that originally was part of the original numbered series that they have now decided to separate and renumber. But what if someone asks for number X of the original series, that now has some totally different number? Do we keep the old number? Embrace the new and find some way to easily refer back to the old number. Reminds me of when highways renumber exits: Exit 299 (formerly Exit 13). How do we make sure we make this all simple and seamless for the user.

Well, we opt for simplicity and consistency. Cross-pollinating series? We put the title into the more established "popular" series. Renumbering? We move to the new numbering, renumber the old, and have a nice reference chart on hand. With some luck we have achieved an easy path to follow for our readers.