Bender Library added the "Popular Reading Collection" to its book selection because of high demand, according to library monitor Sam Reggio.
Each month, newly published popular fiction and nonfiction are added to the collection. The books are on lease from distributor Baker & Taylor.
The library can choose to add the book to its collection or send it back after a 12-month period, Reggio said. There are currently over 100 titles in the collection.
The collection is not part of the Washington Research Libraries consortium, so they are only available to the AU community. Even though the program just started, Reggio said he sees people regularly checking books out from the collection.
"They are considered a special collection in that their call numbers are outside of the Library of Congress catalog system and that they circulate only to the AU community," Reggio said in an e-mail. "While they are classified as separate from the rest of our collection, titles do appear in our online catalog, Aladin."
The "Popular Reading Collection" was added because many students requested that more fiction be added to the library. Reggio said the library already owns some fiction, but the library's main purpose is research.
The library focuses on "materials that would be of interest in an academic setting, such as world literature, peer-reviewed and scholarly nonfiction, specialized and academic journals of all sorts and other periodicals, as well as our illustrious databases," Reggio said in an e-mail.
The money for the collection came from the Student Endowment Fund.
Normally, adding to the library is a lengthy process because the library has to ensure the title will still be of value many years from now, Reggio said. But with the collection, "we can quickly and easily obtain copies of popular books, such as NY Times bestsellers, thrillers, historical nonfiction, politics ... and not have to worry about their place in our collection 30 years from now," he said in an e-mail. "If they aren't being used, we can just send them back."
Some students said they think the new collection is valuable to the library and are excited about it.
"We need a fiction section," said Nathan Behn, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. "It is not necessarily if it's fiction or nonfiction, it's whether it's a good book and written well - something can be learned from that."
Despite all of the reading assigned for classes, students said they will make time to read fiction.
"I will make time to go and look through it," said Maggie Skinner, a sophomore in the School of International Service. "I love to read."
Other students said that while the collection is a good idea, they will never use it.
"I can't imagine having time," said Caleb Smith, a junior in the School of Public Affairs.
Literature professor Anita Sherman said she would prefer the library made scholarly periodicals more available.
"Right now many scholarly periodicals hang in file folders behind a locked door, and faculty members have to ring a bell to get access to them," she said. "I say if it's a choice between popular fiction and academic periodicals, let's go for the scholarship. That said, I concede that any reading is better than no reading."
Required Reading
Here are some of the titles that can be found in the new "Popular Reading Collection" now available in the library.
"The Traitor" by Stephen Coonts "On the Couch" by Lorraine Bracco "Prior Bad Acts" by Tami Hoag "Whatever It Takes" by JD Hayworth "Ricochet" by Sandra Brown "Mary Mary" by James Patterson "The Tenth Circle" by Jodi Picoult "Uncommon Carriers" by John McPhee "The American" by Andrew Britton "Jane Austen in Scarsdale" by Paula Marantz Cohen
