The Librarian's Dilemma

One of the great things about working in a library is the fact that you get to know the collection really well.

You know to look for things in places other people might not think of - not because the books are "hidden" somewhere difficult to find, but rather because you have the freedom to think laterally.

So, for example, when I started learning German I not only went to the language section of the main collection, I also went to the curriculum collection. A number of academic libraries have a curriculum collection, although the collection may be known by a different name. These are designed to look like school libraries, so that Education students can see what kind of resources might be available to them when they go out to a school to teach.

I went to our CC to see what language resources they had, which is where I found one of my favourite "introduction to German" books Learn German (which I mentioned in my From Something to Nothing post.

I wanted my very own copy, but they appeared to be long out of print, so I ordered something that appeared to be a similar thing under a different title (Easy German) to see if it was related.

Turned out it was a later edition - and a substantially revised one at that. While the cartoon story was still there, the layout of the book had been completely overhauled and the illustrations were somewhat re-arranged as a result. The grammar points in the original had been peppered around the same page as the story, but in the new version they had been pulled out to their own pages and fleshed out a bit more. Oh, and a lot of the exercises from the original weren't there in the later version.

So, now that I knew a later version existed, the logical thing to do would be to order it for the CC... Except that the way things are at the moment, ordering a new edition would eventually lead to the old edition being "disposed of", if you know what I mean.

And, from a design perspective, they were quite different. I found the older version easier to read and more interactive, but the newer version more informative and in depth. If it were up to me, I'd definitely want to keep them both. Such things are, however, rarely up to me.

So I spent several weeks wondering if I should order the later edition of the book, knowing it would probably mean we would the older edition. This is particularly relevant to me at the moment, as I'm toying with the idea of looking at the design of introductory language texts as a Master's project.

In the end I bit the bullet and decided that, since I know own both versions (albeit, only in German - and the book does come in French and Spanish) the only people who will miss out are all of our members. And, hey, they probably wouldn't borrow out the older book anyway. Something about people, these days - they can't seem to see an old book on the shelf if there is a new book sitting right next to it...