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Nonfiction Collection Development

Introduction

Two Aspects of Nonfiction in Your Collection

Background Information: Knowing Nonfiction Readers

Usable vs. Readable:

How do you think about that divide? How does it inform your policy?

 

Nonfiction stacksNonfiction Collecting: Two "Streams" to Consider*

1. Just in Time

2. Just in Case

 

Closing

From Cindy Orr: "A really good collection is necessary to be able to perform well as a readers' advisor."

The takeaways:

  • Start to look at nonfiction on the continuum of usable and readable, (or reference and genre, informational and narrative...)

 

  • Fine-tune your nonfiction CD strategies like a fitness regime: the tiniest bits at a time, so you stick with it.

 

  • Set up your own tools for title awareness and varying "streams": Feedly, review resources, patron input, your informal network.

 

Have fun out there!

*With great thanks for terminology to readers' advisor and collection developer extraordinaire Cindy Orr, author of Crash Course in Readers' Advisory.

graphic credits: http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/non-fiction-library.html