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October 9, 2022 by Gary Price

Research Article: “What’s in a Book Exchange: Examining Contents in Relation to Steward Intentions, Geography, and Public Library Collections”

October 9, 2022 by Gary Price

Note: Thank you to SAGE for once again opening their paywall to infoDOCKET so we can share the full text of a new article linked below.

Title

What’s in a Book Exchange: Examining Contents in Relation to Steward Intentions, Geography, and Public Library Collections

Authors

Andrew Mckenna-Foster
Figshare

Hanna Roseen
NCW Libraries

Source

Journal of Librarianship and Information Science
First published online September 28, 202

DOI: 10.1177/09610006221124336

Abstract

In the last decade, book exchanges, most prominently those registered with the Little Free Library® network, have attracted the interest of researchers and media alike. Very little is known about what types of books are available in these book exchanges and how their collections compare to those in public libraries. To address this gap in knowledge, we selected a random sample of 42 Little Free Libraries across eight Seattle neighborhoods to inventory their contents. We interviewed the stewards about their stocking and weeding practices.

Figure 3. Each pie chart represents the top five categories found in each neighborhood standardized by the LFL volume. Central District does not include data for one library that had been removed when we returned to measure its dimensions. Source: 10.1177/09610006221124336

Our inventory shows that most of the books available in Little Free Libraries are children’s, mystery, suspense, self-help/health, and scifi/fantasy books published in the last 10–30 years. Neighborhoods in our sample ranged in socioeconomic and racial diversity measures, but there were no significant differences in LFL contents related to those measures. We also compared our inventory to the collections of nearby public library branches and found Little Free Libraries offer a complementary rather than competitive selection scenario: books in LFLs are generally older, with a lesser proportion of children’s books and higher proportion of fiction books.

Direct to Full Text Article

Filed under: Data Files, Libraries, News, Public Libraries

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About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

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