Pop Goes the Library: The Book

If you happened to hear only quasi-professional shrieks of delight emanating from the general direction of New Jersey at some point on Saturday morning, that would have been the collective squeeing of Liz & I, upon reading the Library Journal review of Pop Goes the Library:

[T]his is an exciting and essential book for those librarians ready to take up the challenge of keeping their libraries relevant to the communities they serve.

To say that we are delighted with this review would be akin to saying that we, y’know, kind of, sort of like reading. Sometimes.

Brad Ward at the Blah Blah Blah Blog from NEFLIN (Northeast Florida Library Information Network:) “Really, really good stuff. . . . The authors were nice enough to also put up a wiki that provides links to the resources listed in their book.”

Andrew at Librarian Idol says, “it’s got some brilliant ideas in it - I highly recommend!” (Librarian Idol also goes on to say some very great stuff about being cool and books and libraries.)

Crossposted at Tea Cozy.

Thanks to all of the people who entered our impromptu book giveaway contest! Across comments to both blogs we had a total of 13 viable entries, so I used a random number generator to produce the following results (drumroll, please):

#5: Loonstone
#6: Julia
#11: Peter Alsbjer

Come on dowwwwwwwn! Or, really, just send your snailmail particulars to popgoesthebook[at]gmail[dot]com. I’ll mail your books out over the weekend.

Thanks once again to all of our lovely contestants, and fear not! We will be holding another contest in weeks to come. This one will be decided based on feats of pop strength, not chance!

Some of the Review Copies, originally uploaded by sophiebiblio.

(Cross-posted at PGTL.)

This is a photo of some of the review copies we sent out recently. But wasn’t the book published in August, you ask? What took you so long? Well might you ask! There’s a story, of course, which Liz documented here.

We’ve got 3 more comp copies to give away — if you want one, leave a comment, and we’ll pick three random commenters to receive one, signed by Liz & me! Ready? Go!

I can’t believe I forgot to include this in my last post — Liz & I were interviewed recently by former PLA president Sarah Long for her weekly libraryland podcast, Longshots. Have a listen here!

Judith Seiss has published a glowing review of PGTL, which you can read here. Thank you, Judy! We’re blushing over here!

The book is temporarily out of stock at Amazon. Please consider purchasing directly from Information Today while Amazon re-stocks! Our publisher is selling the book for 50 full cents cheaper than Amazon!

I went to the post office today and sent off a large stack of review & gift copies. I sent them Book Rate, with Delivery Confirmation, so I will be obsessively entering 16-digit strings at usps.com til I see they’ve all arrived.

We’ve heard that Library Journal will run a review in its November 15th issue — we’ll keep you posted!

The first online review of Pop Goes the Library: the book comes from the brand new blog, In the Library with a Lead Pipe.

It’s the type of review that makes an author’s heart sing. The reviewer “gets it.” Plus, there are great suggestions for the second edition. (I know! Talk about a reviewer thinking ahead!)

I, of course, want to post the entire thing. But instead I’ll include this:

Sophie Brookover and Elizabeth Burns’s Pop Goes the Library is part textbook and part manifesto.

And a paragraph that captures the meat of the book:

There is a message, and that message is important, but Brookover and Burns have decided not to dress that message up in theory or historical context. Instead, they focus on combining practical advice with serious fun: Melanie Griffith’s character in Working Girl provides an example of applied research; Angelina Jolie’s transformation from wild child into latter day Mia Farrow illustrates good public relations; and Johnny Cash, David Bowie, martinis, and iPods are listed as celebrities and trends that are Cool (Kenny Chesney, KC & the Sunshine Band, cosmopolitans, and Zunes are Not Cool).

And a paragraph that captures the heart of the book (along with some nice things about our writing style):

If you’re not interested in pop culture, it may be tempting to dismiss the importance of this book’s message or to overlook its ambitiousness. That would be a mistake: Brookover and Burns cover most of the important lessons on librarianship that can be taught in a book: creating a niche; building a collection; using technology; and developing crowd-pleasing programming, among others. As an added bonus, their writing style is as much fun to read as Michael Buckland, S.R. Ranganathan, Jesse Shera, or Elaine Svenonius. (Speaking of pop culture: does anyone know if Elaine is related to Ian?)

Read the full review here.

While both Sophie and I live in New Jersey, we don’t live close to each other.

If we did, it would be dangerous, as I’m sure things like Printz reading, work, and cleaning would never get done.

We planned to get together late September to sign copies of our books, inscribe messages, and send them out to people.

What happened instead was I woke up to discover this

Aswering the question, “If a tree limb falls in a storm and crashes into three cars right outside Liz’s bedroom window, will she wake up?”

In case you haven’t guessed, the correct answer is, “No, especially if she has taken Tylenol PM.”

Which means that it wasn’t until yesterday that our schedules were such that we could get together in person for the signing and mailing.

Meanwhile, if you are interested in a review copy, let us know and we’ll see what we can do!

I’m discovering all the things that new authors do, as their book goes out into the universe. And they wait….

Today’s fun thing:

WorldCat. As most of already know, WorldCat is “the world’s largest network of library content and services. WorldCat libraries are dedicated to providing access to their resources on the Web, where most people start their search for information.” It’s provided by OCLC. 

For authors, it’s the way to find out which libraries own your books with one easy search. I was pleased as punch to discover that over 40 libraries have added Pop:The Book to their collections!