So it’s not the Wizard of Oz, but all the labels that are used at ALD do take us down a winding path, and it’s not the yellow brick road! A patron who frequents both Koelbel and Castlewood for instance, may find two different stickers for the same genre, or perhaps one branch puts genre stickers on their children’s books, and another one doesn’t. This has been a sticky subject (pun intended) for years and finally we are trying to get a handle on it.Did you know that out of all the stickers and labels in use, only a very few are “official” stickers that come from LMS? Technically, if LMS (or one of our vendors per our instructions) doesn’t put a sticker on an item that means it should not have one. But those rules have been lost in the mists of time and new faces added to the district. We constantly get requests to put red tape on a Teacher Collection item, or a Xmas sticker on a seasonal children’s book. We’re a bit nonplussed when we get these. What red tape? What Christmas sticker? They’re not official and we don’t have them (yet).
By now you have probably heard from your supervisor or manager about giving input to the decision underway to make all stickers standard throughout our branches. Some of the decisions are no-brainers. It’s way past time for a Romance sticker, and an Inspirational sticker, and why not put Mystery and Science Fiction stickers on children’s books as we do for Adult and YA?
Less obvious are the stickers many of you use to direct parents and children to juvenile books in a particular genre. Do you need Historical stickers? Pet stickers? How about Sports? Scary stuff? And of course Caldecott and Newbery.
Now’s the time to get your opinion heard. The sticker issue is part of the Interfiling Draft Decision Announcement . Take a look at it and be sure to get your input to your supervisor.
Oh, by the way, in the above photo, with the exception of the large alphabet letters, there’s not one genre sticker that is official!
