Readers' Advisory: How To Balance Your Library's Reading Budget

Joyce Saricks and Neal Wyatt (the editors of my book) finished up a the first of their online workshops on the topic in the title of this post yesterday.

Over on the ALA Editions Blog, they have posted the resources and some of the slides from their presentation here.

Head on over and see what Joyce and Neal had to say and add your questions to the comments field.

Good RA service need not break the bank.  You can be creative in your purchases as well in how you market your collections in order to stretch your reading budget.  It is imperative in this weakened economy that the library be a place for leisure readers.  Patrons are on a tight budget and they are cutting their spending on books while increasing their use of the local library.

Of course, our budgets are tight at the library too.  We need experts like Joyce and Neal to help remind us of all we can do with our limited funds.

Check it out for yourself.

Over at the BPL we are taking this advice to heart.  We have increased our services to leisure readers both in the library and online in the last year without spending any extra money.  In fact, we spent less on books but increased our circulation by concentrating on staff training, starting a permanent staff recommendation display and blog, The Browsers' Corner, and by focusing our time and energy on displays.

What are you doing in these lean budget times?