Using Best Lists: Another Perspective

I write a lot on this blog about how best lists are an excellent resource. Today, I wanted to pass on another perspective on the same topic by Michael Santangelo via Booklist's Corner Shelf Newsletter [which every single one of you should subscribe to here]:

Michael Santangelo is the Deputy Director of Collection Management at BookOps, the technical services collaboration between the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library. Since starting as a children’s materials selector in 2005 for Brooklyn, he has had various positions working with collection development and technical services. He is currently the co-chair of ALA’s Public Libraries Technical Services Interest Group and is on the LibraryReads Board of Directors. 

See below for his advice and ideas. I have reposted the beginning of his article with a link at the end to the full piece on the Booklist site.

RA Showcase
Michael Santangelo on How Best to Use the Best
Michael Santangelo 

The collection-building tools that are most useful and most needed can be the tools that most overwhelm. This is often the case with those end-of-the-year “best of” lists.

So Many Lists 

There are the usual library focused lists: Booklist; Library Journal; Publisher’s Weekly; Kirkus; Foreword Reviews; and LibraryReads. There are the newspaper lists: The New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; Wall Street Journal. The magazine lists: Entertainment Weekly; O, the Oprah Magazine; Esquire; The New Yorker; Vogue; Essence; The Advocate; Ms. Popular online publications have lists: Jezebel; The Root; The Daily Beast; NPR; Shelf Awareness. My own institution, the New York Public Library, has a much respected set of lists. 

Lastly, there are the lists from RUSA: Notables, the Reading List, the CODES List, the Carnegies, and more, which are released after the Midwinter Meeting.
Popular lists tend to cross genres, but there are genre-specific lists, too. Most people read these for personal reasons—what should I read next, what should I give for the holidays, etc. We take them in as professional tools, to some extent using these lists to evaluate our job performance: did we miss anything this year? Did we buy enough?

Click here to read the full piece.