One of the things that I have always tried to remain wary of in the library is my own personal bias. It has gone through several different phases during the course of my career. Let me take you through it. First, you try to impose your favorite things on the library collection. This is what I call denial. You cannot possibly understand why someone may not love a genre or type of music as much as you do. You cannot possibly fathom why this would occur, so you try to force people to love what you love. This is pointless if you have no evidence to back it up, namely statistics. Another mistake people make is they read too much between the lines within these statistics. These librarians read way too much into something when there is really nothing but air.
I learned this firsthand when another person took over my area and weeded all the stuff that I loved and thought would go out like gangbusters. This did not occur, but in fact the exact opposite took place because many of my favorite books just collected dust. I gradually came to terms with this, but I still found myself relying too much on that good ole' personal bias. This phase I call Experience and Education. This is where you learn to distinguish between purchasing something based on your own librarian expertise, not my favorite hobby when I go home at night. One of the best exercises is to ask yourself, why do I want this book so badly? Upon answering this, look to see if you come up with excuses that stretch the actual logic to purchase something. You need to know the difference between a professional purchase and a personal purchase. One is done for the overall good of the library, while the other is done partially out of ego and selfishness.
I told you this book would be painfully honest and I feel librarians who purchase materials disproportionately to the reality of the collection needs and budget are selfish in that they are using taxpayer money to really massage their own ego and spread the gospel on stuff they like. The final stage is acceptance. You have accepted the fact that this is not your money, this is not your bedroom, and you already have an Amazon.com account. I hate to say the word apathy, but you have to develop an attitude that you could care less. You do not need to see the book when it arrives, no need to touch it, look at it, skim it, read it. If you want to read it, you can walk over to the shelf and get like any other patron.
A couple of times in my career have I seen people lose absolute focus and buy too much in one area, while other areas suffer because of it. This in the words of Peter Griffin, "really grinds my gears." My question to these selectors was when did you decide what is more important for a collection to own. Now, if you show me statistics that back this up, then fine I will be quiet about it, but if your proof, how shall I put, let me see, sucks, then we have to talk. This is why the best solution to this is having someone check your purchasing, but not just your manager. I am not talking about purchasing with another person. I mean here is to have colleagues review your purchasing. Each person is assigned to another colleague. I know you are saying that this is the manager's job. I would reply that sometimes a collection can be too vast and expansive for one person to get a handle on. This creates checks and balances within the department.
This also takes care of the tattle tales. I am so sick of other staff members telling me I am not doing my job correctly, then proceeding to incorrectly put into context or not include all the details on what I am doing. You are bringing in a third party that is invested in the process because you could be the check on an area they select in. I have grown tired of this whole he said, she said culture that uses hearsay and not enough facts. This is an absolutely critical ingredient to all of this. If you are going to tell the manager that someone is inadequate in their purchasing; the evidence must be demonstrated in a flawless manner. No more of this crappy anecdotal evidence that suddenly becomes the rule, not the exception. My simple answer to that scenario...Screw all that.
