Report by Val Page

Book of the Month is going great guns here in North Tyneside. 18 copies of Gretta Mulrooney's Marble Heart out on the display stand at 9am on the day of publication - gives you a nice warm feeling! Readers here are now beginning to look for BOTM.

We are prepping our BOTM titles differently to ordinary stock. Each BOTM has a coloured date label and a "Book of the Month" flash across the inside of the book jacket. This helps us keep track if titles stray from the dumpbin, and also helps us to retrieve copies when the collection is ready to move on.

We are running BOTM in 3 service points (soon to be 4). Central library first, then 2 area libraries (alternately) then, once we have 4 collections, our brand new large branch library at Killingworth.

Must say that I am finding the qualitative evaluation difficult as my day job is in a different area. However, I just have a gut feeling that its going really well (I do inspect the dumpbin every morning at Central, check copies on loan, speak to staff at area libraries etc. I feel that any qualitative evaluation needs to run for at least 6 months, maybe even the full 12, before we can offer anything worthwhile.

Personally I'd like to see this continue after 2000 in North Tyneside. Perhaps extend it to more than one title so that each service point gets a current BOTM. It's obviously answering a need - all of our February & March titles went out within a few days - some have had repeated issues.