rufflesnotdiets:

greenchestnuts:

Hey aces, ace-spectrum people, and allies, I have thought of a potential way to further our eeeeeevil asexual agenda!

Next month, the first book about the asexual identity comes out in US markets (I don’t know about international ones). Some parts of the description are giving me pause, but it is by a researcher who has done some thoughtful studies of asexuality, so I hope it will be good. If it is, we should get it disseminated!

Here’s how: most library systems have a way to suggest purchases. Here are examples from Washington University in St. Louis, Berkeley, and the Boston Public Library. Libraries can’t purchase everything that is suggested to them, but encouraging libraries to add this to their collection will help spread fairly accurate knowledge about asexuality to the general public, and especially to those who may be asexual but are looking for the right word. So, if you feel this is a good book for your local public or academic library to have, you can suggest that they purchase it! (However, please don’t submit requests to random libraries that you don’t use or where you don’t live.)

(bolding above added by me, because it is important)

So, here are some pro-tips to up your chances of successfully getting a book on your library shelves. 

For Academic/University libraries: The good news is that if you contact the right person in the right way there is a high chance of the book being ordered because this is clearly a scholarly work on a topic probably not covered elsewhere in the collection.  It’s the kind of thing librarians like to buy.  So, the right person is the person who orders books for Psychology.  The easiest way to find this out is to call, chat, or visit the reference desk and just ask for the e-mail address of the librarian who orders books for Psychology/Social Sciences.  The other way is to find a staff directory for the library (probably under an “About” page on the library website) and look for someone with a title that says something along the lines of “Liaison/ Subject Specialist/ Reference Librarian/ Bibliographer for Social Sciences/Psychology”.  E-mail this person from your university e-mail account telling them briefly why you think this book is worth buying for the library.  You can bring up visibility issues, but you will be more successful focusing on the fact that this book covers a unique topic, not otherwise represented in the catalog, and an area of emerging study.  Be sure to say you want to read this book or it will be useful for your research/studies.  A shocking percentage of books ordered by academic libraries are never circulated, not even once, so a guaranteed circulation can be powerfully motivating.  While if it is within budget most librarians would immediately order this book in response to an e-mail like this from a student, if you can get a faculty member to request it you have pretty much guaranteed that book will be on the shelf within a year if the library has any money at all.

Public Libraries: so, this is not really my area, and all public libraries are organized pretty differently so this advice is more generic.  First of all, don’t just donate the book.  This may seem counter-intuitive but the costs of adding a book to a collection are about more than just buying the book, so most donated books go straight to the book sale if the library doesn’t know why they should add this specific book to the collection.  Again, you want to directly contact a librarian.  In really large urban systems there might be subject specialist like with academic libraries, but this is unusual.  Public libraries are more focused on serving their communities than advancing knowledge, so really contact the manager/head librarian of your personal branch and tell them why you think it is important to add this book.  In this case you want to talk up visibility/social justice issues.  Talk about why it’s important to you personally and how it could be important to others in the community.  Public libraries are much more strapped for cash, and while for a university library this is a cheap purchase, for a public library it is more expensive than average, so if it is within your means to do so suggest/offer an earmarked cash donation to get the book on the shelf.

Good advice! Thanks for the tips.