Crash Course in Collection Development by Wayne Disher

Author:Wayne Disher [Wayne Disher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781610698146
Publisher: ABC-CLIO

Pulling Punches

Most reviewers tend to be kind and gentle to the material they review, giving authors the benefit of the doubt and pulling their punches so as not to offend anyone. As mom used to say, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Rather than criticize a work, the reviewer resorts to descriptive analysis. Since so many reviews are descriptive rather than evaluative, the reader has to continually ask whether the reason the evaluative remarks were left out of the review is because the reviewer didn't want to say anything negative, or because that reviewer just didn't have space enough to say much more.

When collection developers and selectors are looking for honesty and detail, they're likely to find there are disproportionately more positive (or ambiguous) reviews than negative reviews. Some review sources used in public libraries (e.g., Booklist ) have an editorial policy not to publish negative reviews. If you can't find a review of a particular item in one of these sources, you will wonder if the item wasn't included because the editors felt it was a sub-par item, or because there just wasn't room to include a review of the item in that issue.

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