Lila Denning

Steve Thomas: Lila, welcome to the podcast.

Lila Denning: Thank you for having me, Steve.

Steve Thomas: I’ve followed your work for a while, mostly courtesy of friend of the show, Becky Spratford, of linking to you often, and you do guest posts for her and here and there, and we’ve, and we met a couple years ago in Chicago at a conference, but can you tell listeners a little bit about what got you into librarianship in the first place and how you got into the role that you’re in today?

Lila Denning: Well, I started as a manager. I managed a comic book store. I became a manager at a Barnes and Noble. And I left and I went to graduate school. Originally I was going to get a PhD. I got a master’s degree in Holocaust Studies, the focus on Antisemitism, but I changed my mind about going to get a PhD, and I decided instead to enroll in another graduate program while I was finishing up the first one. Don’t recommend. And I got a master’s degree in library science, which fits in a lot more with the bookstore stuff in a lot of ways than you would think. When I finished, I got a job at my local library system before I graduated as a library assistant, and I have been there 17 years.

Steve Thomas: So you’ve been at the same library system the entire time you’ve been in libraries?

Lila Denning: Yes, I have.

Steve Thomas: Wow. Very cool. And what is your current role?

Lila Denning: I manage the acquisitions department. We take care of obtaining and paying for, processing all of the print and digital materials for the library system. So the librarians who work for me select all kinds of print materials, they select the eBooks, we pay for the databases.

Steve Thomas: Has it been a tough balance to figure out how much to spend on print and how much to spend on eBooks? I assume you guys have Libby and what other kind of platforms do you guys use for digital?

Lila Denning: We have Libby as part of a county cooperative, and then we also buy primarily audio books in Hoopla in addition to having the Hoopla Instant. And we also have Cloud Library because we’re part of a network in Florida where our patrons can borrow things from around the state that’s in Cloud. We have all three of those. Aside from reopening our main library, we haven’t really put more into print in the last probably three or four years. Digital has gone up, but digital usage went up during the pandemic, and it hasn’t gone down. It just keeps getting to be more and more.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And obviously it’s more expensive than print as well per copy.

Lila Denning: Yes, it is. I’ve discovered most readers have no idea how expensive a bestseller… a bestselling mystery book does not cost that much to buy on Kindle, but it’s insane to buy a copy for a library. And that’s for 12 months. People don’t realize how much some of these things cost.

Steve Thomas: We need some billionaires giving libraries some money so we can do these things.

But a lot of the work you do in the wider profession is around what you’d label, I think, as passive readers’ advisory. Your blog is called Passively Recommending Books. How would you define passive readers’ advisory?

Lila Denning: Passive readers’ advisory is readers’ advisory that the patron can approach on their own time without any mediation from a library worker. So it’s not, you’re shelving books in the stacks, and someone walks up to you and asks you to recommend a horror novel, or you’re at a desk and somebody wants something to read ’cause they finished all the Nicholas Sparks.

So these are bookmarks with lists on them. They’re social media posts, they’re lists online, they’re book displays, it’s signage in the stacks. It’s things that help guide people to find something they would like to read or that will meet their information need, but you don’t have to be the one mediating it or even talking to them. Something any library worker can do, anybody can do it in the building. People that work in your office, your facility staff, the people that work in youth can recommend adult books. Anybody can do it.

Steve Thomas: And I think it’s helpful for those introverted patrons that come in that don’t wanna approach anybody and ask anything that they can still get a little help with stuff like that. To get really personal RA, of course, they’re gonna have to come approach somebody, but it gets a little bit more of that of, “Oh look, a display about westerns good. I love westerns. I can get these here.” Do you see it complementing traditional readers advisory work?

Lila Denning: It does. It does because if you can put up a display about something that’s hitting in pop culture or online or about a popular book. You can advertise, ” While you’re waiting for Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown, here are some other books you might enjoy,” and you’re marketing and moving your back list, but you’re also letting people know, we do have the book. You have to put a hold on it because there’s 800 people in front of you. So it does complement and work with, because it also gives you a place you can point somebody to if there’s a movie that’s popular or something like 50 Shades of Grey, which may be in a sub-genre that you’re not familiar with. There were plenty of people, Sarah Wendell put up a bunch of lists from her blog and you can point people to here, and it helps you when you’re in person if and plus as you start to help fill them in and do them, your knowledge of what’s in your collection grows.

Steve Thomas: We’re recording this toward the end of December, like, Fern Michaels just passed away so you could do a “Rest in Peace Fern Michaels” display because you know you have 10,000 Fern Michaels books on your shelf.

Lila Denning: Yeah, when a celebrity dies, we found a bunch of books even when Neil Pert of Rush died, we did a display with a bunch of books about drumming, about rock and roll, fiction, non-fiction. We dug out some non-fiction DVDs. Any subject you can think of, any event can be used as a display. I’ve done book displays where I’ve just pulled out 15 or 20 books that haven’t circulated in a long time, and I put a picture of a kitten on a sign and we put them up. And most of them got checked out because they were faced out. Because unless you know what you’re looking for, you don’t see them on the shelves. It’s just a big mass of spines.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. Do you recommend running reports for things like that of things that have not checked out and trying to get those going?

Lila Denning: Yeah, I mean, I think your focus should be primarily on those books that haven’t found their reader. Nora Roberts fans will find her books. If you’re gonna look at horror, something Becky and I talk about all the time, Stephen King is fine. Nobody needs your help finding Stephen King books, but there are lots of authors whose books are similar to many of his books that they may never have heard of. So really, when you’re doing passive readers’ advisory, I really approach it more as marketing. You’re marketing all these things in your collection that haven’t found their reader because they’re sitting on the shelf with just the spine facing out, and people may not have stumbled on that author yet.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, we try to, if there’s room on the end of the shelf to face out a book at the end of the shelf. Those publishers paid a lot of money to some artist or graphic designer to create that cover to entice people to read that book. That’s the whole point. Judge the book by the cover, please!

Lila Denning: People will impulse check out a book just because they see that cover. I mean, I don’t do big, huge paper mache displays, tons of decorations. So it’s the covers and people will grab a book just because they saw the cover. We did a display one year for Pakistan and Indian Independence Days. They emptied out. People walked by and saw the covers.

Steve Thomas: That’s great. And do you ever like put QR codes or stuff on displays as well so they can get to your catalog and find more? We always hated QR codes for the longest time, but now that phone cameras will automatically find them and take you to the link, I think they’ve finally found their use.

Lila Denning: Pandemic brought them back. We do displays if there’s, when Bird Box was on Netflix. Bird Box by Josh Malerman, it was available on Hoopla Instant for an audio book checkout, no waits. So we put up a display with Bird Box, this is where it’s available, put a QR code to it and then put physical books that were sort of in the same arena. Then we have put up displays of covers before of books that are popular. We’ve done that on our social media too. For any kind of Heritage Awareness Month, you can do those and put a QR code.

Steve Thomas: Basically displays are for everything. Whatever you circulate is what you should be displaying.

Lila Denning: I’ve done them in the summer and before the winter holidays with audio books or lists of digital audio books for long car rides. We pull out holiday movies and set them up on a display so people don’t have to look ’cause you might find them all over your DVD collection. I would put up any kind of materials that you have in the collection. It doesn’t need to be just limited to books. Tie some of the books into some of your databases. If you have some of those foreign language databases, advertise some of your books in translation or some of your dictionaries that are also in foreign languages. You can advertise your business databases, put up some business books around it as well. You can tie all of that together.

Steve Thomas: Are there certain types of displays, you mentioned heritage months and things like that, is there anything in particular that you feel like resonates more consistently? Or is it just kind of a hodgepodge?

Lila Denning: It’s hodgepodge. It’s hard to say. I tell my staff there’s two kinds of great book displays: one stays up all the month and you don’t have to do anything with it, and it’s easy, and the other one is constantly empty. It’s hard to say. I’ve done tons of different ones. Hands down, the most popular one featured cookbooks and biographies and memoirs by chefs. That was the one that emptied out in a day and a half. Some of it could be where you’re located and what kind of patron base you come in. Sometimes people like the funny ones or if there’s something on the sign that really ties into something that’s going on. But it’s kind of hard to say ’cause I’ve done them, like I said, with a picture of a cat on it, and it was completely random fiction books.

Steve Thomas: People love a cat.

Lila Denning: That was the secret.

Steve Thomas: Just like the internet. Just cats.

Lila Denning: Cats everywhere.

Steve Thomas: Somebody should write a musical about cats. Oh wait.

So if somebody’s just facing that blank canvas and trying to think of ideas, do you have ways for people to start thinking through those ideas and figure out what to put up?

Lila Denning: I mean, if you don’t have any ideas, the easiest thing to do is look at what’s you have the most holds on and search and find some books in your collection that are similar to it. And it’s not a test. It’s not like library school, unless you post a picture online, no one’s gonna judge you. So be pretty liberal with what you think is connected to it and just put up a sign, you know, “While you’re waiting for this, try these!” and that is one of the easiest ways, and it doesn’t even have to be as connected as that. Pull a book title that’s super popular, like the Let Them Theory and put up some other books that have “let” or “them” in the title because a lot of these are just going to be impulse that people are taking off.

Steve Thomas: I definitely like those, like you said, of the high holds and the bestsellers and things like “If you liked James Patterson, try this.” “If you liked John Grisham, try this.” So you’re still using their name to pull people to the display, but it’s finding other things. Again, like you said, like Stephen King. People who wanna read James Patterson are gonna find James Patterson. They’re gonna find John Grisham. They’re gonna find Stephen King, and Stephen King in particular, Stephen King loves supporting up and coming authors. I think he would rather you promote them than promote him. I think he knows that he’s fine, has plenty of money and plenty of readers.

Lila Denning: I replace his books every two years because they get worn out, damaged. They don’t get returned. All of them. Salem’s Lot up. Just about all of them get replaced every couple of years. But there are lots of authors that write books similar to those. If you liked It or if you liked Salem’s Lot or if you liked something like the Stand, you can pull some of those authors. There is a anthology of stories that take place in the universe of the Stand. You could pull some of those authors out and put them on a display. You could do one for Georgia authors or books that take place in Georgia. That would be something that would be lots of fun. In fact, there’s a great horror author who lives in Georgia, Andy Davidson!

Steve Thomas: You’ve mentioned putting pictures of kittens and being funny, are there any design elements that you feel work better than others on a display?

Lila Denning: A sign without so many words on it. We know if you put a sign up with all the words, people will stop reading after the first sentence, so I try to put something that fits in one line, maybe two in a large font. But if you are pulling from a website or if you want to give people, ” visit here for more information,” you can add that and people that want it can find it, but the main thing you see when you look at a books display should be the books.

I have seen book displays where there’s so many decorations behind them and signs and so many words, it’s hard to see the books. If you look at a Barnes & Noble display or the displays at your local indie bookstore, it’s all about the books. They may have a cute sign up, but it’s all about the books, not about the ephemera and the signage, and I get that those are creative outlets and people like it, but book displays are really a marketing tool for your collection. And you can also market your services and programs with them. So that really needs to be the focus. If it looks too much like an art installation, people might be afraid to take to take them, maybe because they won’t ’em to disturb your work.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. Maybe put that energy into a different kind project maybe.

Lila Denning: Bookstore displays are one 8.5×11″ sign and piles and piles of books.

Steve Thomas: And how often do you refresh your displays? Like, I guess two different questions. How often do you refill them? When there’s a spot open, do you put another book there? Do you have times that you go around and look at them and refill them and then also when you’re working in a library and doing that, do you encourage the whole staff to do that? So like if they walk past the display, can they refill it or, that’s Lila’s display, so I’m not supposed to refill it kind of thing?

Lila Denning: We have it, it’s everybody’s job to try to keep them full. And we add books when there’s an obvious gap. Sometimes people will add a couple extra over on the side so you can just fill it in if we’re busy, but we make it everybody’s job. And eventually what gets in there might be farther and farther from whatever the original theme is but that’s fine. No one’s going to yell at you. It needs to be everybody’s job ’cause then they’re also becoming familiar with what books are on display in case they have to look for one.

Steve Thomas: What are your thoughts on how full a display should be? ‘Cause I know there are some people who just want to throw half the collection onto a table and it’s like just overflowing with books. And then I’ve also heard the theory of, “Oh, you should have blank spots because that makes it look like it’s popular and people are taking things,” and I don’t know what the balance there is.

Lila Denning: I use a lot, and mine sometimes can be a little messy, so they actually do look like they’ve been looked through. I think if there’s too few, again, unless it’s in a small space, but it can also look as if it’s a curated collection that no one’s supposed to touch. It’s not a special collection behind glass unless you do them that way. But I’ve put them on on carts and filled the bottom row, and the top row had some easels up. So I add a lot more, I think, than a lot of people do, just because it also is easier. If you wanna put four books on a big table, you’re gonna be refilling it a lot.

Steve Thomas: Right. And how long do you, I mean it may not be a set number, but when you’re looking at a display and it’s not working, when do you decide to pull the plug and go, “Oh, that’s just not interesting, I’m gonna move on.” Do you just keep with your regular schedule of, if I change displays monthly, it’s gonna be monthly?

Lila Denning: We do it monthly, but you do have to be a little bit flexible because you can’t have a display like the one with cookbooks and memoirs of chefs that I’ve put up in February, we’ve run out. So then you have to have backup ideas. I would probably give it two weeks, but depends on how many displays you have up. We have a lot. So if we have one that’s not really going, that’s one less that we have to fill in. We can focus on the other ones. I don’t leave them up usually for more than a month. You have to be flexible though, because sometimes your administration or whoever they answer to, whoever your stakeholders are, will get an idea that you have to promote something, and then that’s gonna be up for however long it’s going to be up.

Steve Thomas: Right, right. And, like over the summer, we’ll keep this a lot of the same displays up because it’s the summer reading program and so it’s tied into that kind of thing, but it won’t be all of them. ’cause I know we have, we have one display table that we always have as this table is promoting an upcoming program. So like we’re doing a program on snowflakes, and so this display is all about snowflakes and there are flyers on there for the program as well. So you’re doing a display and promoting your programming at the same time.

Lila Denning: And that works really, really well. One of our most popular adult programs is Make a Castle for your Cat. We supply empty cardboard boxes and art tools, and adults sit very seriously on the ground, and they make castles for their cats. And we set up a display with a finished cat castle and a bunch of books about cats. Definitely is a great idea and you can actually, in a program, put a cart full of books, whether it’s an adult program and you’re just gonna put books related to the program or in a youth story time, you can bring a cart or two of children’s books and some of your new adult books or adult general interest fiction and nonfiction for parents whose kids have decided they are done. And the adults can grab them and check them out with whatever picture books or board books they grab.

I had a patron once tell me they didn’t know we had a children’s department. My building has been in existence since 1964, but that’s not why he used the library. He came in, he went in one direction to use the computers. He never went in the other direction and saw the youth department. So you can’t approach things like everybody’s spending 20 to 40 hours a week in the building like you are.

Steve Thomas: I think you mentioned before that placement is an important thing. Do you try to consider that and where you put like a table for a display, like in high traffic areas and things like that?

Lila Denning: We have some in the main walkway. Most libraries I think have like a main entrance and a main walkway but you all, everybody has a book cart. You can put a book cart anywhere in the building and fill it full of books and DVDs and audio books and music. You can bring children’s books out of the youth department and put them in the center of the building so that people can grab them and see them there as well. Some people have told me they don’t have any room, but most people have space on the kiosk where they have their library catalog for patrons, or there’s room at the circulation desk, or if you have an information or reference desk, there’s room there, or in the teen department.

Steve Thomas: Have you ever worked with like doing patron curated displays? Patron Picks instead of Staff Picks or something like that?

Lila Denning: You can do an interactive sort of passive programming element, and it depends on your building. You have to know your patrons. Some communities could have people write stuff on post-it notes and stick it up on a board, a window or display. Some places need to mediate them and have them put in a box so we can screen them, especially depending on who comes in, and that’s a way you could set that up. In November, things that I’m thankful for, why i’m thankful for the library, and you could have all these post-it notes or signs where people have written what they’re thankful for, and put a table in front with a bunch of books about the library.

You can ask patrons what their top five books of the year are, and you can put a sign up with the ones that got the most picks so people can see them. But tie in, especially if a ton of people put, you know, James by Percival Everett, or there’s a lot of people put a really popular book on their list, find similar books for an author like Percival Everett who had James, which came out and was this huge, critical and commercial success. Maybe people aren’t familiar with his older books, so find ways to connect your collection more broadly in with that.

I’ve never allowed patrons to just put books up on display because, especially depending on the political environment where you live, people would do it in bookstores, they would move certain books to fiction ’cause they thought that was funny. And you know, I wouldn’t want people putting books, plus we might not be able to find them if someone actually wants it, if you don’t know what’s on that display.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and those interactive ones, I do love those, those are fun where you can do the post-it notes or write something on a whiteboard or something like that. But probably no matter where you are, make sure you’re monitoring that semi-regularly because you never know when you’re gonna come in. Somebody’s gonna come in and decide to draw male body parts or something onto it, or write something inappropriate, whether it’s political or curse words or whatever, is not what your community standards would want to have on display at the library.

Lila Denning: And that’s why we usually just have them drop ’em in a box, and then we put them up after we’ve vetted them.

Steve Thomas: How do you ensure that displays represent a wide range of voices and experiences?

Lila Denning: Well, part of it is you have to have a librarian who is clued into that, kind of review them. In my library, we have a librarian who actually does review all the book displays in our library to make sure and works with staff who are new to it to sort of get them on board, but somebody in a supervisory position or somebody needs to review them and just help explain to people, we wanna make sure we’re including all parts of our collection. Make sure they’re being broad. Do you have books in translation? Do you have books by foreign authors? You know, do you have books by authors from different parts of the United States? Or if you included small press? You could look at it and say, you know, all these guys are kind of the same. Do you have any women in the display? And as you work with people, I think they will start to get more clued into what the standards are, and you can have written standards for displays.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, you don’t need to have a, “Oh look, here’s our black mystery writers display.” Like you just have a mystery writer’s display and you put Walter Mosley or SA Crosby on there, like you just include them.

Lila Denning: Right, the only time black authors come off your shelves should not be in February. You should include black authors on displays all year round and in every kind of display. There’s obviously these months, Jewish Book Month just ended. Last month was Native American Heritage Month. We have these months, where you can put a focus on them, but you should also put out books by all kinds of authors all year.

Diversity isn’t a genre. You should include diverse books because your patrons are as curious as you are. It drives me crazy when I hear librarians say, “Well, my patrons won’t read that.” Well, would you? Usually they tell me, yes. Well, your patrons are as curious as as you are. You don’t have to have a huge group of certain people to have books be attractive to them. People are curious about other parts of the world and other people, and they want to know about them.

We find patrons almost every day who don’t know that we have eBooks and e-audio books. You can get a lot of people to cancel their Audible subscriptions and start using your library if you get out there and find ways to get information about your library in the hands of people that aren’t using it, because eventually when you have a budget issue and everybody will have one at some point, that way you are out there and you’ve increased the number of people that really care about your library.

So if local businesses are having some kind of event or something they’re doing together, depending on the rules of your building, you could put information about that event and put up a sign of 12 books that are about this. One of the breweries near me did a Krampus Night, put up a sign in the brewery with 12 books about Krampus, and then advertise the Krampus Night maybe in your library. Work with a coffee shop, local brewery, local distillery, and do book pairings with different drinks or cookies at a bakery.

It depends on the rules of your library and your stakeholders and if you have a board, but there are ways to get information about your collection and what you offer out and become more of a part of your surrounding small businesses.

Steve Thomas: Absolutely. That’s a very important part of your community. You should be part of your entire community, and that includes businesses. It’s not just the individual people.

Lila Denning: How many people wait in line at your local, independent coffee shop? While they’re standing there and they can be seeing this kind of book or this character would drink this or if you enjoyed drinking this, try this book. And put in a link to your catalog, or if you do online card registrations and put it up there. A lot of these places will want to be seen as supporting and partnering with the library.

And make sure that if you have groups that meet, or organizations that help with budding entrepreneurs or with people trying to switch careers or job honking groups, see if you can present to them and let them know the kind of books you have and that you have LinkedIn Learning, or if you have some of the demographic type databases and all of that.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, get those out there. All those databases and stuff that people don’t, it’s not getting usage. Those are the ones, again, like we said, of running reports for things that aren’t circing. If there are databases that aren’t getting used, you’re paying a lot of money for those. Promote those and get people to use them because we know the value of them, but if people don’t know, especially those demographic things that people are starting businesses, those that is super valuable information to know where you should put your nail salon. Like, oh, there’s not one right here. Like I can see in the map that I figured it out and this is where a lot of middle aged women live and whatever demographic you’re going for, like, yeah, those things can be invaluable to small businesses.

Lila Denning: Do it in social media and try to get your printed things out in the community, because by you putting them on your social media and out in the community, you’re also reaching people that don’t step foot in your building. The people that come into our buildings are important, but so are all the people that don’t even know the depth of what you’re offering.

Steve Thomas: Before we wrap up, I wanted to talk a little bit about, I know you love horror and we mentioned that earlier of doing things with horror, and you had done a interview with the Horror Writers Association a year or two ago, and you talked about how horror had helped you understand the world. Can you talk about how reading a horror helped you understand the world?

Lila Denning: Well, I got into horror through my mother who read horror. I read Cujo when I was 11. It is not an appropriate book for someone in middle school. Do not give it to them. I think because horror deals with emotions just like romance does, and that’s one of the reasons historically, people turn their nose up at it because it does deal with emotions and I think because there’s so many different kinds of people and circumstances and how you’re told about how they relate to it and what kind of feelings they generate.

I think really understanding the world is trying to understand all the different kinds of people in it that aren’t like you, and there’s also a lot of things that are very similar about us, but I think learning about other people’s emotions and appreciating them will help you learn more about the world.

Steve Thomas: Is there an author in particular that’s one of your favorites that really epitomizes what you love about horror in particular, but just what you love about reading?

Lila Denning: Clay McLeod Chapman. His last book was Wake Up and Open Your Eyes. He’ll have, I think, two books coming out next year. He writes a lot about emotions and a lot about grief and relationships and connections between people, but there’s also a lot of humor in his books. It takes some degree of talent to be able to balance terror and horror and feelings and while also bringing in humor.

I also love the works of Cynthia Pelayo. She lives up in Chicago where so many great librarians are and she does kind of blending of horror and fairytales and mystery and she ties in a ton of Chicago history. So the city and its surrounding area are almost a character in her books because she brings in obscure parts of history and ties it all in together. So those are two current authors.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. I’ve never read Clay McLeod Chapman, but I have read Children of Chicago. I’ve mentioned it on the show before, but every year I let Becky pick a horror book for me to read ’cause I’m not generally a horror reader, and I think over time she’s figured out what kind of stuff I like. And so I did to get to talk to Alma Katsu earlier when her newest book came out. I’ve read several of hers. I think she’s kind of on my level of horror. I don’t want too much description of all the gross parts.

Lila Denning: There’s multiple levels of scares and multiple levels of gore. Something can be really frightening, but have very little gore, just like in romance where they talk about levels of heat or some mysteries are very tense and there’s lots of violence and you know, Jo Nesbø, some of his mysteries, you open up in the first chapter and it’s very graphic and every kind of genre has levels of that.

You should read Rachel Harrison. She doesn’t really do over the top gore. They’re still frightening. She writes a lot about what’s it like to be a younger woman now. She switches sub genres each book. Cackle was about witches, and she’s done haunted houses and vampires and werewolves, but they are very accessible, and they’re not over the top with gore.

Steve Thomas: Okay. Well, I will add her to my list of trying horror people. I usually read mysteries and the occasional sci-fi thing, and I try to read a wide variety and, I mean, I’ve read romance. I try to read it just so I understand it. Like even if it’s not, like, definitely romance is not my thing generally, that I would normally read, but I can appreciate it more I think because I’ve read romance. I mean, I took a class in college where we only read westerns, so I know westerns pretty well. Literature of the American West was the title, but it was reading Zane Grey and all these guys. It was a fun class. I was reading westerns ’cause the professor liked westerns, so he made a class about it.

Lila Denning: Everybody has something they don’t read a lot of. I don’t read a lot of space opera.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. You like what you like, you read what you wanna read. ” Every book, its reader” kind of thing. Not every book is for everybody and that’s fine.

Lila Denning: Well, part of the reason I tell people to involve everyone in book displays is everybody in your building is an expert or a fan of something whether it’s heavy metal or they might love to read Amish romances or they might be really into baking, or they might really like South Asian mystery. Everybody in the building is an expert on something, and we did that when I worked in a bookstore. You, you may not be a mystery reader, but if you have a customer who’s asking about them, you’d go track down the mystery person. And even if they were youth or some children’s books, they would come out and help the person. So I think that’s an important thing to involve everybody, but also know who you work with and know who the people are that are really deep into a genre.

Steve Thomas: Lila, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really enjoyed this discussion. I enjoyed our discussions that we had a couple years ago at a party at ALA. I hope to see you again sometime at a conference!

Lila Denning: Alright, well thank you so much for having me, Steve. I hope that maybe we’ll see each other in Chicago again soon.

Steve Thomas: Alright, thanks a lot.

Lila Denning: Alright, thank you.