Book selection in Danish public libraries 1993
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Book Selection in Danish Public Libraries
Anne Lise Japsen
Since the mideighties a heated debate has been going on in Denmark as to the
acquisition policy in public libraries. The critics have made their points with
the greater intensity. Authors, publishers and critics have accused the public
libraries of inclining towards demands rather than quality, thereby letting down
the good book. However, librarians put up the defence that they do buy quality
material, but are forced to buying chiefly what people want ? they are, so to
speak, the public's libraries.
The Danish National Library Authority consequently decided to carry out an
investigation into the libraries' acquisitions with a view to conducting the
debate on more solid eround. The resulting report was entitled The LibrarY and
the Good Book. (1)
The report contains a summary of the debate from 1986?1989, an explanation of
the basis for book selection: Legislation and the library annotations and a
statistics section on book production and the activities and economics of the
public libraries. Unlike the overall budgets the public libraries' book budgets
have not been keeping up with the general price development, and the
extraordinarily vast increase in book prices has been eroding the book budgets.
That is why accessions decreased by 27% during the eighties, while at the same
time book production has increased by about 2000 titles, especially nonfiction
literature. The decline in accessions has really changed the library landscape.
The number of very small libraries has increased, the number of larger libraries
has diminished. While in 1979. 129 out of a total of 250 public libraries bought
less than 3000 volumes for adults, the figure in 1989 had risen to 156.
On the basis of these facts we have been examining the public library
acquisitions for adults during one single year. 1989. The emphasis has been on
fiction, this area being the main object for discussion and also because we had
to put certain limits on our investigations. We did look into the popular
section of nonfiction literature, and unveiled some general traits in the
libraries' acquisitions, which might make up for some of the shortcomings. The
main emphasis was put on the relation between quality and anticipated demand. We
did not examine the relation between supply and demand. The investigation aimed
to assess how book selection compared with the public libraries' obejctive: to
further education, enlightenment and cultural activity ? and not to scrutinize
the use. Moreover we were in no doubt at all that the libraries were absolutely
right in maintaining that bestsellers were more in demand than the more taxing
books. A brief section deals with demand and shows this to be by no means as
predictable as one might possibly believe.
Book Selection
The very core of our investigation is the analysis of the libraries' purchase of
114 titles. We chose 102 fictional titles, which had received unanimously eood
reviews and 12 titles from the daily paper Politiken's bestseller list in 1989.
The list was compiled by a panel of librarians with extensive experience in book
selection and was then sent to all the public libraries. Very nearly everybody
responded, and this then formed the basis for a complete picture of the
libraries' acquisitions. It turned out that all the libraries were predominantly
buying bestsellers and the solid. popular ?mainly Danish ?novels. Perhaps this
came as no great surprise. What did create a stir was the fact that major
foreign writers like Mario Vargas Llosa, Bruce Chatwin, Yashar Kemal, Thomas
Mann and Paul Auster were represented by a mere 3?400 copies in the public
libraries altogether. i.e. about 1000 libraries. Poetry came bottom of the list.
Wellknown Danish poets and world famous people like Joseph Brodsky and Seamus
Heaney were only purchased by the major libraries and only totalling 100 copies.
We drew the conclusion that libraries prefer quality, but only in so far as this
may be combined with popularity ? and that the "narrow' quality literature
suffers in the process.
Sales figures for fiction in 1989 obtained from the Danish Library Binding
Centre confirmed this view, but it turned out that not only the good, popular
literature, but also the mediocre or downright poor literature figured higher up
on the libraries' acquisition lists than the socalled narrow literature. McBain,
Hornhaver and Gardner were placed far above Auster, Saramago and Kallifatides.
Popular choice
As far as nonfiction was concerned we had to content ourselves with
concentrating on the sales figures from the Danish Library Binding Centre, and
they only represent a minor part of the nonfiction literature (about 700 out of
a total of over 8000 new nonfiction titles published in 1989). They are the
titles expected to be sold in a reasonable number to the libraries, that is to
say the popular part of non-fiction literature. As regards this part of our
investigation we did not attempt an evaluation of quality, but only examined the
nature of the subject categories. The sales figures for nonfiction are much
lower than for fiction, but the results are similar: Most libraries buy most
copies of what is most popular; biographies of wellknown popular people and the
great mass of private life literature that keeps appearing now; books on
loneliness, body language, performance anxiety, cholesterol cures, healing,
erotic massage, allergy diets etc. The more general, cultural or historical
nonfiction, which might be described ? as opposed to the private life literature
? as outside world literature is being sold in much smaller numbers, i.e. to a
minority of libraries, just as was the case for fiction.
The conclusion for this part of the investigation was that here, too, the
anticipated demand was a very decisive factor. If the impression we had gained
when studying the accessioning of popular nonfiction were sympthomatic of the
libraries' accession policy one might well pose the question as to how smaller
libraries would be able to live up to the whole essential purpose of the library
service.
One might also describe the acquisitions of both fiction and nonfiction in terms
used by the critics (newspaper reviews and the Danish Library Binding Centre's
library annotations). Material described as "popular" ("easy reading", "great
handbook", "style not literary/intellectual", "should be in great demand" etc.)
is being bought by many libraries in relatively large numbers, whereas the more
demanding or specialized material ("experimenting", "foreign", "for teachers of
adults" etc.) is being bought by few libraries in small numbers.
As mentioned earlier the investigation revealed some interesting characteristics
of the libraries' accessioning. The libraries' accessions should be seen to
accommodate the character of the district, as stipulated in the Ministerial
Order, which really refers to the size of the area, i.e. the number of people in
the municipality. Quite an amazing adaptation running through right down to the
individual title, when looking at the libraries in groups according to number of
inhabitants. First of all we examined how many libraries had pur-chased the
individual titles. We then drew a bar chart for each of the 114 titles, and it
is quite obvious that the fewer libraries having bought a given title, the fewer
small libraries have bought it. The narrower the title, the fewer small
libraries.
As the above shows the accession per inhabitant varies little, but it has to be
said that the accession per inhabitant decreases with the size of the
municipality. Thus small municipalities ? in more senses than one ? offer lesser
service than the larger ones, when measuring the library`s service against the
volume of accessions.
When looking at how many copies of the 114 titles were purchased, it turned out
that the libraries' order of priorities was similar, but their resources varied
and subsequently the level tended to differ. Figure 3 shows on the x?axis the
102 most favourably reviewed titles and on the y?axis the average number of
copies per title for each of the five groups of libraries. The upper curve shows
the larger libraries' average number of copies of the 102 titles, the lower
curve shows the smallest libraries' average number of copies. The curves show
that the tendency is similar but at a different level. As regards the smaller
libraries the same order of priority results in some titles being cut out
altogether. The amazing thing is that the figure reveals the result of 25.000
individual decisions, made by the librarians together in the libraries.
The reason for this similarity is undoubtedly the Danish library policy of this
century: Legislation, advisory services. library annotations etc. all working
towards creating a highly developed. homogenous library service throughout the
country. It is interesting to notice that the li-braries react in much the same
Nvay, even when some people main-tain they ought to be different as has been the
"in" attitude over the past few years. They have also been told to give people
what they want. In this way the main emphasis has inclined towards the taste of
the majority, not towards a regard for the individual.
The main purpose of the investigation was to compare library practice with
library legislation. The fundamental question to be debated was whether the
libraries were to put the main emphasis on presenting a selection (at a certain
level) of newly published literature or whether they should offer people just
what they want - or what one imagines they want.
The current debate
The report created quite a stir. The Minister of Cultural Affairs held a
conference in March 1992, the Danish National Library Authority together with
the county libraries arranged a number of meetings in the public libraries and
an extensive debate was conducted in the daily papers. (2) Apparently the two
parties in the debate have not chanced their previous points of view. The
critics' worst suspicions were confirmed. and the librarians have stuck to their
defence. which referred mainly to post modernist and other tendencies
charateristic of that period, which question the idea of a unified culture and
unambiguous quality judgements. They would not let themselves be drawn into a
theoretical public debate. but there are signs that the book selection debate in
the library world has definitely been influenced by the report.
So far the most obvious result of the investigation is the effect on the current
revision of the Public Libraries Act. Comments in connection with an amendment
moved by the socialdemocratic Minister of Cultural Affairs. Jytte Hilden. on
26th May this year show deliberations as to whether the investigation and the
ensuing debate should cause changes in the Public Libraries Act's conditions as
to choice of materials, e.g. whether "quality" as a criterium should figure more
prominently than other relevant criteria, such as "versatility" and "topicality".
The Ministry did not consider any amendment concerning choice of materials as
being expedient "at the present time". but notes that the current debate might
sharpen the libraries' awareness of the criteria applied in choice of materials.
The increased book prices are cited as being the primary reason for the fall in
the libraries' gross accessions with the addition that the acquisition of new
information carrying media must be fitted into the budgets.
Finally it is being underlined vet again that the application of the criteria
for choice of materials is extremely important, if the libraries are to live up
to the requirements of the Public Libraries Act concerning education,
enlightenment and other cultural activities, and the National Librarv Authority
is supposed to monitor the development within the area and encouraQe initiatives
such as further investi-gations, guidelines or pilot projects to ensure that the
criteria concerning choice of materials are being fulfilled according to the law.
The National Library Authority is financing a supplementary investi-gation into
the public libraries' acquisition of nonfiction for adults. This investigation
is being conducted by Morten Hein and Anne Lise Japsen and should be completed
by the end of March 1994.
Anne Lise Japsen, Library Consultant, The Danish National Library Authority.
Copenhagen.
Literature
1. Anne Lise Japsen: Biblioreker og den gode bog. Hvad styrer
folkebibliorekernes anskaffelsespolitik. København: GyIdendal, 1992. 169 p.'
2. Biblioreket og den gode bog. Kultuminisrerens konfererence i Eigtveds Pakhus
den 23. marts 1992. København: Kulturministeriet, 1992. 57 p.