As a librarian, I am often expected to have read all the books. Here’s the thing though. I don’t actually like reading all the books. Like you, I really only like reading books that I enjoy. I’m one of those pesky people who believes the refrain “If you read a book for entertainment, it should be entertaining” should apply to me and not just the students at my middle school library.

But as a librarian, it’s important for me to know my collection so that I can guide readers to the books they may or may not realize they are looking for. How do I do that, if not by reading as many books cover-to-cover as I possibly can?

Sample books, don’t read them

One of my favorite concepts from last semester in library school comes from an off-hand comment my Reference Services professor made about book sampling. In one of his lectures, Dr. Aguiñaga mentioned that as librarians we need to get in the habit of reading just enough of a book to get a sense of its content, style, and the type of reader who might be interested in it, before returning it to the shelves and pulling out the next one. Don’t try to read your collection cover to cover, he said, but do spend some time each week sampling your collection and any new purchases you’ve made so that you can gain a sense of what is there.

I love this idea, because at its heart it acknowledges a few things:

Not every book is for every reader.Librarians need to know their collection, and they deserve to reserve some reading time for their own enjoyment.If librarians try to read every book cover-to-cover that a patron might one day be interested in, they are setting themselves up for a lot of stress and potential burnout. Books I collected in the process of making a Reader’s Advisory Sports list for the students at my middle school. I sampled these books before adding them to the list, although I didn’t know to call it that yet. (Photo: Shala Howell)Why not read books cover-to-cover?

I mean, if you want to and have time to, go for it.

But at my public middle school, we have a 15,000 book collection. I walked in the door after a lifetime of age-appropriate reading. The renaissance in middle grade publishing happened after I had graduated into adulthood, which meant that when I started as a Library Assistant I had read relatively few books in our middle grade collection. Let’s be generous and say I had read a couple hundred of them for one reason or another. Let’s be even more generous and pretend that all 200 of those books were books that today’s middle schooler would also be interested in reading, instead of the hodgepodge of popular and outdated picks they actually are.

That still leaves me with 14,800 books that I haven’t read.

The thought of reading all those books is just exhausting. (Photo: Shala Howell)

Still, not every book in the collection circulates every year. Let’s assume that only 20% of those 15,000 books in the collection actually circulate in a given year. Setting a goal of reading the actively circulating books cover to cover would still require me to read 3000 books. That’s… not going to happen any time soon.

On the other hand, I can wrap my head around setting aside time to sample between 3-4 books a day, a rate at which I could sample 750-1000 books a year. A much less stressful plan. The idea of book sampling becomes even more useful when I consider doing targeted book sampling, in which I search for and sample books in response to direct patron requests or patterns of requests. (In fact, this is how I made the book lists at my middle school library.)

Book sampling is a freeing concept in my personal life as well.

I start so many more books than I actually finish. I used to hold on to so much guilt about not finishing books that weren’t working for me. I have an entire bookshelf that is nothing but books I’ve started, read enough to justify using a bookmark, then set aside to finish later. Later never came for most of the now-dusty books I stashed on that shelf.

But now that I’ve learned about book sampling, I am ready to let go of the psychic weight of having to one day finish them. Instead, I’m going to reclassify them as Books I’ve Sampled, spend a minute thinking about which type of reader would enjoy them, log that thought on my Books I’ve Sampled shelf in Goodreads, and donate the book itself to my local Friends of the Public Library Book Sale.

A stack of books that I might sample, might read. Only time will tell. (Photo: Shala Howell)Reclaim my mental space. Reclaim my time. Reclaim my book shelf.

Logging a sampled book on Goodreads is one thing, but here on Caterpickles, I’ll only review books I have read cover to cover. Book reviews are a different beast. I also don’t need to do a thousand of them every year.

What about you? Do you read every book cover to cover?