PopeStNick5: Top Ten

Top-Ten Suggestions for Making Purchasing Suggestions to Your Library

· The form you need to fill out may be called a variety of things: patron request, item request, suggest a purchase, or something similar.

· Making suggestions online is often easier than filling out a form in person. To find your library’s website visit http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/.

· Give as much information about the book as you can: title, author, publisher, date published, ISBN number, and a link to a review of the book.

· Sometimes it’s more effective to ask a main library instead of a suburban or branch library.

· You’ll have a better chance of a purchase at a big library than a small one, which needs to get rid of books to save room.

· Titles published in the past year are more likely to be purchased. Librarians want their purchases to have a long shelf life and so are weary of older books.

· If you do suggest an older title, make sure to comment it’s a “classic” and will be checked out for years to come.

· Don’t give up if you feel your suggestions are ignored. Book orders are made when funds are available, so it may take a few months before you see the fruits of your efforts.

· Tell all of your like-minded friends to make purchasing suggestions too. Some libraries wait until they have two or three requests of the same book before ordering.Once the library purchases the books you suggest, check them out so the librarian will continue to order similar titles.

Number Eleven: Join the Pope St. Nicholas V Yahoo Group today!