A Glimpse Behind the Curtain

Greetings and belated "Welcome Back!" I hope everyone had a good, relaxing Spring Break. Mine was so relaxing that I had to take an extra week off (mostly for college basketball-related reasons...) Which, of course, led to spending all last week catching up on everything from the previous two weeks.

Anyhoo - this all leads into my topic this week. As librarians, one of our more important, but often behind-the-scenes, duties is selecting materials - often called collection development. We spend most of our free time at the reference desk reading magazines, journals, listserv and blog posts, websites, etc. - all dedicated to helping us decide what materials to purchase for the library. So imagine my surprise when, during my catch-up, I read this review by Nancy Cannon on Booklist Online (http://www.booklistonline.com/default.aspx?page=show_product&pid=3198973):

Threats to human life invariably arouse public interest. Written for the nonspecialist, Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues covers the medical, cultural, sociological, and historical aspects of infectious diseases from prehistoric times to the present. About 300 articles, authored and signed by subject specialists, present an authoritative, often-engaging overview of diseases of consequence to humankind worldwide.

Covering the broad aspects of human pandemics, articles range in length from one to several pages. Examples of articles include Biblical plagues, Bioterrorism, Black Death (1347–1352), Chinese disease theory and medicine, Legionnaires’ disease, Measles in the colonial Americas, Neolithic revolution and epidemic disease, Slavery and disease, and Whooping cough. There are also entries for individuals such as Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur. This work provides some fascinating background material on human diseases: for example, we learn that the pre-Columbian Incas believed that disease was linked to proper behavior, ritual purity, and the relationship between humans and the divine; debate continues on the organism responsible for the Black Death, which decimated human populations in Europe and the Mediterranean world in the fourteenth century; at least 40 million people died worldwide during the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919; isolated instances of bubonic plague still occur in the U.S. About 70 black-and-white illustrations and photographs supplement the text. References to further reading are included at the end of most articles, and some articles are augmented by primary source documents, highlighted in sidebars. Appendixes include an 11-page glossary and a 13-page bibliography. A 30-page index provides subject access to the contents.

Sounds great, no? Well, guess what? We don't have it at the Longview Library and chances are we won't be getting it. There are several factors that go into selection decisions:

1) The most important factor is quality. We generally don't waste our time and money on material that hasn't received good reviews.

2) Of course, in this economic climate, another important factor is cost. Retail price on the EoPP&P is $199.95, which actually isn't too bad for a 920-page, hard-cover reference book with illustrations.

3) A third consideration is appropriateness, or how well material fits into our collection. This includes intended audience (4th-graders, college students, or nuclear physicists, for three examples) and specific classes or departments the material will support. This is one of the reasons why I don't think we'll be ordering the EoPP&P. After this semester's campus-wide reading of The Plague (which the Encyclopedia would have been perfect for...), there just aren't too many classes I can imagine needing to use an in-depth reference book on infectious diseases. In fact, as of this posting, the main library at WashU in St. Louis and the veterinary library (!) at MU were the only academic libraries in Missouri that had purchased it.

4) But the main reason I think we won't be buying the EoPP&P is duplication of materials. In general, we try not to buy stuff that covers the same ground as sources we already own. There are exceptions, of course. The most important one is updating older resources. Another would be anticipation of high demand (this would be material like dictionaries or extra copies of The Plague). If you didn't click on the link above, here's the next part of Nancy Cannon's review:

A complementary work, Facts On File’s Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence: From Ancient Times to the Present (3d ed., 2007), has entries for more than 700 epidemics or outbreaks but not for related topics such as infectious diseases, treatments, individuals, and historical contexts.

As I'm sure you can guess, we have this source. In fact, I cited it in this post. As noted there, we don't have the paper copy, but rather have access through one of our online subscription databases - Ancient and Medieval History Online, in this case - so you don't even have to come to the library to use it. Of course, we always appreciate people coming to the library too - it gives us a good excuse to stop reviewing materials for a while!

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(PS - If you have any trouble accessing the library's Online Databases, give us a call at 672-2268 or go to our website and click the Reference Librarian Chat button - helping you use our resources is even more important than collection development!)