Tag Archive for: Librarians

PLA here I come!

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by Shari Randall

Next week I’ll be at the Public Library Association conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ll be signing at the Sisters in Crime booth 1745 on Thursday, February 27, at 3 pm. I hope you’ll stop by to say hello!
Writers have to evaluate each conference they attend, carefully consider how precious time and money will be spent. Attending library focused conferences, especially one geared to librarians who work in public libraries, is a no-brainer for me.
Public librarians, like booksellers, have a unique relationship with readers. In polls of most trusted professions, librarians always top the list. They know what we read, what we say we read and don’t finish, and which books come back tattered, water stained, and well loved. They know which books have waiting lists and which award winners are returned time after time unfinished.
Librarians have a sharp eye for breakout writers and popular titles. A year before the whole world went crazy for vampire books, librarians were sharing news of a book called Twilight that they couldn’t keep on the shelves.
That’s why I’m eager to go to PLA – I can’t wait to see what books are on the librarians’ radar for 2020 and beyond. I know I’ll come back with a suitcase full of ARCs and ideas.
What conferences do you enjoy?

The Dealer in Your Neighborhood

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by Bethany Maines

I was talking to a librarian the other day and she laughed
when I said I thought librarians were like drug dealers.  But they really are! They even target
the little kids! Get them hooked on the picture books, next thing you know the kids are
applying for library cards and mainlining Harry Potter, Divergent and TheTesting.  Give it a few years and
YA just won’t give the same buzz and the kids have to move on to bigger and
bigger fiction.  And that’s when
the librarians start pushing the hardcore stuff – Faulkner, Atwood, Joyce. If
you’re not careful your kid could end up reading the entire Lord of the Rings
even though there’s a perfectly good director’s extended cut blue ray back
home.
And just like pushers, librarians are extremely
open-minded.  They don’t care where
you’ve come from.  Rich, poor, or
in between – all library cards are the same to them.  (Unless it’s an out of state card, in which case you will
have to pay the buck and get a local card.)  They don’t even judge when all you want to read is Romance
novels; they just point you toward the romance section and recommend new
authors who also write in the kilt and dragon milieu.  It’s a slippery slope, my friends. You go into the library
for the videos and the free internet access and the next thing you know you’re
reading and using words like “milieu.” 

So, if that kind of blatant pushing of mind-expanding
education is acceptable to you, then you should probably hug the next librarian
you see.  Just remember that the
VIG on those late library books is due next week…
  
Bethany Maines
is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales
from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Have Your Cake & Eat It Too!

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As Murder Takes the Cake is making its way onto library shelves across the U.S. we’d like to celebrate with a SPECIAL DRAWING JUST FOR LIBRARIANS.

Sign up for our newsletter at our website. The sign up block is on the right column, just scroll down a few inches. Indicate on the sign up form that you are a librarian or work/volunteer in a library. You’ll be automatically entered into the June, July, and August 2009 drawing for an autographed copy of Murder Takes the Cake and a Smith Island Cake.

If you are already an Evelyn David Newsletter subscriber and need to update your subscription to indicate that you are a librarian, just follow the same procedure.

3 months – 3 drawings. Sign up today and have 3 chances to win!

Good luck!

And for all the rest of us who are not lucky enough to work in a library? Check back, we’ve got another great contest coming this summer!

Evelyn David