Using Awards Lists As A RA Tool: Whiting Literary Magazine Prize

This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool. 

Back in May, I wrote this post about how we should consider collecting literary magazines and shelving them with fiction so that more readers, who would enjoy them if only they knew of their existence, could discover them more easily. It was picked up by a few other library places and seemed to find a receptive audience. 

And then earlier this month, I saw this announcement of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize Winners in PW. So, it seems like a good time to bring back this lit mag conversation.

If you want ideas on what literary magazines to start collecting go directly to the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize page. On one page they have all of the winners, with the magazine's "about" statement and the judges citation comments. Everything you need for the current and backlist winners on a single page. Very useful.

The collection development is waiting there for you to use it. You can easily go through the last few years of winners and decide which ones are best for your collection. Also check out my post for a few others that I recommend.

But you don't want to invest in buying/subscribing to these lit mags and simply let them languish on the shelf. As Robin Bradford likes to say, we need to buy to try, not buy to die. Too often we buy something great and then just hope people find it. And then, when people don't find it on their own, in our messy, overstuffed, and hard to browse collections, we say, oh no one wants these; we need to stop buying this.

NO. This is so wrong and counter to everything we should be doing, every day. When you buy something, especially a new format type, you need to give it a chance. Remember your RA Basics-- we promote the items that people will not find on their own. Click here for an entire post on that topic.

So, after you order a few literary magazines you need to do some merchandizing to let people know that you have added them. That you have this new format and it will be shelved with the fiction for leaguer readers to find it more easily in the place where they are browsing for leisure reading.

Of course this includes, displaying them prominently in the building and featuring the collection online, website and social media, newsletter (online and print), old fashioned signage, whatever you can. 

Write up a press release style blurb about the new collection. Talk about why you have purchased them, where you shelve them, and how you identified the ones to add (link to the Whiting award page). Use the write ups on the award home page to "book talk" the magazines. Feel free to use any of my language from this post as well.

Include this statement in all library communication for a month. Schedule social media posts, contact the local paper, add it to email newsletters, make it a news story on website. Use whatever you have in your marketing toolbox and give them a chance. And display them on their own.

Do not buy these lit mags for them to die. Make it clear that you want your patrons to give them a try. Often, all our patrons need is a small push to try something. Put it in front of them, make the argument as to why you, the professional, think they are worthy of the patrons leisure time, and then watch them circulate. If only 20% of the people who give them a try return to them, that is a HUGE success.

This is the perfect example of the spirit of this series of posts-- Using Awards Lists As A RA Tool. We can use it to suggest to readers, for collection development, and also to showcase what we have and get people excited to try something they never would have found without us.