Day in the life of a Public Library Book Buyer!

Thanks to Helen the Librarian from the Pima County Public Library in Tucson, Arizona for sharing her day with us! Here is a unique look into what a Public Library book buyer does. Sounds fun!

Day in the life of a Public Library Book Buyer!

I have the best job in my public library system: I select books for adults, in English and in Spanish for 27 libraries. I don’t supervise anyone but myself which is a freedom I greatly appreciate.

Everyday I receive requests from library staff & patrons and read reviews of forthcoming titles. I work to fill-in missing titles of favorite old series (for mystery & science fiction especially), classics and other titles that have been lost but are still loved. And, I eagerly unpack boxes of “advance reading” copies - uncorrected proofs - to see what’s going to be “hyped” by publishers in the coming months. I try to read my free e-mail newsletter, “Shelf Awareness: Daily Enlightenment for the Book Trade”, every day (http://www.shelf-awareness.com/). This publication is, “…dedicated to helping the people in stores, in libraries and on the Web buy, sell and lend books most wisely.” I like knowing what books will be on television and radio shows such as The Colbert Report or NPR and reading interviews with authors.

More often than you might think, my job also involves justifying my decisions to purchase a particular title (or not). My department receives complaints all the time regarding materials that people find offensive in one way or another and we do our best to respond promptly and courteously. I used to think this type of complaint mainly initiated with a patron. I was disappointed to discover that sometimes a person with an MLS, employed by the library, will try to limit access to an item that may have been selected to fill a patron’s request. So, sometimes my job is to educate staff about our selection criteria and policies and ideals regarding intellectual freedom.

Three people work in my department. There is also another selector for children’s and young adult materials and our supervisor. We have a six million dollar materials budget for a service area of one million people. Six dollars per patron, per year, does not stretch as far as we would like it to but we do the best we can. In addition to books, we purchase magazines, newspapers, downloadable media, dvds, music cds, books on cd and databases.



Helen the Librarian, Book Buyer

Pima County Public Library

helen.gutierrez@pima.gov