Capturing your Community: Partnering with Local Booksellers for Collection Development and Events

摘要

In the past few years, libraries have focused their attention on creating library spaces similar to those found in bookstores, yet they have rarely explored the collaborative opportunities provided by local independent bookstores. When librarians at a large academic institution partnered with a local independent bookstore, they invested in their local economy and provided a model of collaboration that supports collection development and events programming. Leisure reading collections are common among academic library collections, especially as libraries adopt bookstore models for space, design, and service. College and university libraries are quickly catching on to what bookstores do well for service provision and space. When the Shapiro Undergraduate Library at the University of Michigan created a new space for students to study and collaborate, it seemed fitting that the leisure collection should be moved to this new space to create a bookstore atmosphere. As librarians began planning to grow the leisure reading collection, local booksellers were called in to lend their expertise. Local booksellers have made a business of knowing what the community is reading and or not reading. The survival of their businesses depends on their attention to literary trends. The library found that partnering with a local, independent bookstore allows an academic library to build a vibrant leisure reading collection and opens the door to dynamic programming opportunities, while investing in the local economy.