I’ve gone for brain candy recently, so I thought I’d share two bits of librarian-type info about books in general to spare you the fluff. First item of trivia: Turn over the title page of any book; you’ll notice copyright information and a string of strange numbers following the letters ISBN. The letters are to be pronounced, as in CIA and FDR. They stand for International Standard Book Number, which is the way publishers, librarians, booksellers, and the Library of Congress can find a book. Each book has one; if a book appears in different formats, such as both hard cover and paperback or paperback and e-book, it has two different ISBNs. ISBNs come from the company Bowker, to which the Library of Congress has given this role. They are a monopoly; nowhere else in the U.S. can you get an ISBN, which costs $125.00 but is yours and yours alone, forever. (If you’re prolific, you can buy a ten-pack at a reduced rate.) Bowker says “The most important identifier your book can have is the ISBN.” Unless you are self-publishing, getting your ISBN is work a publisher will do for you. Bowker also publishes the definitive tome Books in Print. I assume it’s all online now, but back when I was a college library student worker, they were enormous gray books with teeny-tiny print, shelves and shelves of them waiting to be consulted. One of my jobs was to check any book orders from faculty to make sure the book was in print before we placed an order. The second area of arcane stuff: Where do library books come from? Libraries of any size do not order from Amazon or B&N, but from what’s called a jobber—essentially a middle company between publishers and libraries. They are not publishers; they’re the giant claw in a toy-grabbing machine, pulling each library or bookseller’s order from the various publishing houses and mailing it out. Two of the largest jobbers are Ingram or Baker and Taylor. (The latter is more interesting to me, because they have two Scottish fold library cats named after them, Baker and Taylor. They also use CATS as the acronym for their Children and Adult Services. When boxes from a jobber arrive, someone at the library or bookstore has the pleasure of opening the box and checking the order, inhaling that new book smell and the colorful book covers. It’s essentially Christmas, or any other gift-giving holiday, many times a year.
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What I’m ReadingI began working in libraries as a seventh grader, courtesy of scoliosis. My orthopedic surgeon wrote me a pass to miss gym class, so I began working in the school library to feed my love of reading. Even after my surgery to correct the curvature, I kept getting out of gym to work in my high school library and then in my college library (for pay, at last!).
So began my eventual career as a college reference librarian—after a detour into teaching high school English. Later I worked for an educational publisher before going back to libraries.
I have a reading and writing life now. I devour both fiction and nonfiction, and will tell you about some of my favorite reads, both old friends and new discoveries.
Here's some library-themed music to get you in the mood.
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