Word on the Stacks

Many librarians, when ‘shopping’ for resources, will likely consider ‘recommendation’ lists and reviews. Here are a few that I browse:   Book TV  is a service of  C-SPAN.org  and is self-described as “Television for Serious Readers.” Consistent with its sponsor, C-SPAN, Book TV covers primarily current politics or political history formatted as videotaped interviews.   New York Times Book Review  includes reviews and best-seller lists from several different genres from  Hardcover Fiction  to  Children’s Picture Books . Books We Love ,   a Web resource  from National Public Radio (is a catalog of book titles with brief critiques of each; it is most definitely one of my go-to resources.  The list is 2800 titles long going back to works first published in 2013.  The site’s editors have organized the collection by year of publication and then classified by either genre or by a short description. Two such descriptions that...

This week’s Wrap-up is the   States Newsroom , a   national 501(c)(3) nonprofit with offices in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Washington, D.C.  Its purpose is to address an increasing lack of state-focused news coverage.  According to a recent  Pew Center Research  (2020) publication, newsroom employment has fallen 26% since 2008.  The Newsroom is an organization of independent 25 affiliates/partners across 23 states. To view a roster of affiliates, click the  Newsroom  link at the top of its Homepage. One of the affiliate organizations is in New Mexico –  Source NM  , also self-described as  Scrappy Independent Journalism for You .  The  AZ Mirror   may also be of interest to our campus community  (i.e. insightful investigative. Independent ).  Followers of New Mexico news may also wish to check out the  New Mexico Political Report .  It also operates as a non-profit.  With kind regards, Jim Fi...

  We in the library are working hard to clear inches from our stacks to make room for new print resources.  This is never easy.  An important criterion that we consider is whether or not a title was checked out within the last 10 years.  It also may be one of those titles that all ‘good’ libraries should have regardless of use. We also look at the condition of books in the collection. If a book is damaged and shows its age, we might retain it, replace it or delete it from the collection. Regardless, books in poor condition can detract from perceived currency of a library’s collection.   The library also retains journals of regional interest which do occupy a significant amount of space in the lower level of the library. In going through the process of culling the collection, I found that these journals are in full-text and on line.  These three are noteworthy: The UNM Law School first published the  Natural Resources Journal  in  1961 and it ...