Edelweiss, Or Crack Cocaine for Librarians/Collection Development People (Stephanie Wilkes)
This is one of those ‘informative training type’ posts where I want to let you guys in on a little website that has completely blown my Snuggie off. (Don’t steal my phrase…I’m gonna trademark that.) Basically, if you are a librarian who orders books or if you work in collection development, you are going to want info about this website. Edelweiss is a website that has this tagline: “Whether you’re a bookseller, sales rep, librarian, reviewer, or publisher, you have the same goal: to connect readers with books”. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
So, instead of waiting for those color catalogs to come in the mail and letting them pile up on a corner in your office along with all other mail that we get daily, you can create an account and peruse the catalogs one by one all day long.
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| See the page here |
You can see the sale date, the ISBN #, the targeted audience, pages, sales rights, the Goodreads meter that shows the popularity of the title, summary, bio, marketing plans, selling points (which can be used for book talks), and quotes and reviews. What more could you ask for?
Oh, well this:
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| See the page here |
That little green button? Yes, on Edelweiss you can Request a Review Copy for your e-reader. So, it takes what NetGalley has done and brought it up to a collection development level. I will say that NetGalley does have more YA titles than Edelweiss though, not sure why.
Filed under: Collection Development, Edelweiss, Tools
About Karen Jensen, MLS
Karen Jensen has been a Teen Services Librarian for almost 30 years. She created TLT in 2011 and is the co-editor of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth (ALA Editions, 2014).
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Thanks for the resources. This is a serious question. I am just a beginning developer of collections, I have been doing mostly YA in our library. My question to you is – could you elaborate on why you use these other resources over Amazon? Maybe it is just my library, but I have found that the more I use Amazon (for #'s) and certain blogs that review advanced copies (for content review), the better my circulation seems to be. The more I have tried to order from catalogs (well-reviewed by professionals,) the less the kids seem to check those out. Is this just a YA thing? Or are you not wanting to focus on actual circulation? Just some serious questions, like I said, from a novice. Thanks!
You are correct, sometimes what is well reviewed is not popular with our teens and our circulation statistics can prove it. As a reviewer, I tend to look at it with two separate eyes: 1) is it well written? and 2) will teens like it? This is one of the advantages of VOYA, they separate their reviews into these two categories: quality and popularity. Edelweiss puts all this information into one spot for you and unlike Amazon, it can give you information before you need to have it in your library. I have gone from a large to a small library (with a tiny budget) and I really find myself using Edelweiss and Netgalley because I want to see – and read – the book for myself to make selection decisions. Edelweiss puts so much information in one place by connecting to the Goodreads account and more. And of course, we try to provide reviews here to help you as well. We are already doing it for ourselves, so we might as well share it with everyone else. But I'll let Steph answer as well.
I am all about making sure that we are selecting books from a discovery point that is a reputable source. I use Amazon as a secondary source. One of the main reasons why is because those Professional Reviews and websites that are not looking to make a sale are the websites in which you will need to show proof of in case you or your library is ever challenged for materials.
While I focus on what is popular as well, it is also just as important that I make sure that I have sources to back me up in the case of a challenge and Amazon is not a website that can do that.
Another reason is that, and this is purely speculative, but as trends dictate what is on the bestseller list on Amazon, I believe that at times, these rankings are skewed. For example, books with more 'likes' can show up and any Tom, Dick, and Harry can click like. I have several smaller name prints who have actually emailed out people asking them to click 'like' so their book would appear in the bestseller list. That seems very skewed. The popular books will always stand out.
Use your professional resources first, and bookseller websites second. Hope that answers your question!
Ok, fair enough. Thanks for the information. I will check out Edelweiss very soon!