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Forward from Patricia D. Wallace, Chair, Hawaii Working Group (ALA Social Responsibility Round Table /Alternatives in Print Division) SLIS graduate student, Texas Women's University Denwall@aol.com The following is the first in a series of posts from librarians in Hawaii which I am sharing with all of you and which I hope will help answer some of the many questions I continue to get regarding the details of the contract between Baker & Taylor and all Hawaii State Public Libraries. [P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P] [P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P] [P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P] From: Norman Fitzpatrick <gutent@hgea.org> Young Adult Librarian, Kaneohe Public Library, Oahu, Hi To: "Patricia Wallace" <DENWALL@aol.com>, cc. "Laurel L. Indalecio" <laindale@leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu>, "Kelly King" <keking@makani.k12.hi.us> Subject: Questions for Bart Kane Date: Jan 7, 1997 As a Young Adult librarian, over the past six months I have continually asked questions of the administration and the state librarian, Bart Kane. These questions have been ignored or given trite and irrelevant answers. 1) Why did Mr. Kane so blatantly ignore Young Adult Services when the new contract with Baker&Taylor was written? Only 1.8% of the fy96 budget of 1,900,000 was spent on YA books. This is only a token amount considering the large percentage of teens that use the library on a daily basis. Mr . Kane's answer has been - if the teens read more we would order more YA books. If we want teens to read more, and if we are truly concerned about teen performance in school, we must first provide the books they need and want. For AY in 1996 an apallingly low 34 units for only FIVE 1995 Best Books for YA titles were ordered! 2) Why did Mr. Kane not take into consideration the effect of unit pricing on the Young Adult Collection when the B&T contract was written? The across -the -board $20.94 per unit cost discriminates against YA since the majority of teen books are paperback format. To hear that this unit pricing balances out because of the other high price books such as reference books only means that YA is subsidizing the purchase of Adult materials. And we haven't seen much of the expensive ones, either! This unit pricing has hurt the YA collection tremendously. We will receive 2/3rds fewer books as a result. Teen books that cost $5.00 or less will all cost $20.94. 3) Why does Mr. Kane feel he can ignore the needs of the teens? Book selection for YA has been POOR to Totally Inadequate. No science fiction or fantasy paperbacks were ordered for YA. These popular genres attract many teens to reading. No graphic Novels were ordered. These draw in many reluctant readers. Almost no current YA best sellers have been received. We continually receive duplicates of books we already have. Or administration has called YA books "timeless", and said they can be ordered later. Teen books are not "timeless". They have current best sellers the same as adults. Teens have a right to the same treatment we give adult Best sellers. If we continue with this attitude toward teens, how can we expect them to change their attitudes? In order to meet the needs of the teens, book selection must be returned to the individual libraries, and not given to some commercial vendor whose priority is a profit margin. 4) Why was it necessary for Mr. Kane to place the entire book budget with a mainland outsourcer? Regardless of how small our budget, we could have kept a percentage of funds available for local purchase. In the past we had an account with the local bookstore. If a new book came out that was really popular with teens, we could just go and purchase it. Even this was taken away. Why? Mr. Kane did not have to give our entire budget for the next FIVE YEARS to a mainland firm. This has severely hurt the teen book collection. No more than a dozen titles of the books received for teens from B&T have been popular with our local teens. Most of the books they have asked for I have been unable to provide. The above questions only touch on this problem. To list them all would take many pages. Suffice it to say that Young adult Services has been horribly hurt by the B&T contract initiated by Bart Kane. Norman Fitzpatrick [P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P] [P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P] [P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P][P]