These are the top books checked out at the Pima County Library

It may lack the glitz of Grammy night or the glamour of the Oscars, but the Pima County Public Library can play this year-end awards game, too, you know.

Each January, the library compiles a list of the books most often requested by library card-holders during the previous year.

There is no red carpet, no trophy, no acceptance speeches. This “award” doesn’t even have a name, so let’s call it our Readers Choice Award, and invite Kate DeMeester-Lane — the library services manager — to announce the winner.

“The library’s most popular book in 2023,” she laughed last week, “was ‘Desert Star‘ by Michael Connelly.”

“Desert Star” topped the checkout list of physical books, going to 3,136 cardholders. It was third on the e-book list with checkouts totaling 1,861. Those 4,997 total checkouts ranked Connelly No. 1 and extended the long run of mysteries atop the library’s annual bestseller list.

“I was a little surprised it was him this time,” DeMeester-Lane confessed. “The usual suspects are John Grisham and James Patterson, but Connelly has always been popular here … and our readers love mysteries.”

In Hollywood, award-winners commonly thank those people who work behind the scenes. If Connelly were to do that here, he might well begin with DeMeester-Lane and the support services team on the fourth floor of the Joel Valdez Main Library downtown.

This is the unit that grows and nurtures a collection that now holds more than a million items, 195,000 of them being books. These are big numbers. The work is complex, so last week DeMeester-Lane agreed to illustrate by re-tracing the library lifeline of a single book: “Desert Star” by Michael Connelly.

The library first learned of this book in May 2022, six months before its scheduled release. That is when word reached the collection development office, where Jessica Pryde, Elizabeth Taylor, Michelle Creston and Sara Vega screen possible additions to the library catalog. “Desert Star” was on a watch list assembled by Baker & Taylor, a distribution company that connects American publishers to libraries across the United States. “In popular fiction, we have an ‘Automatically Yours’ list of more than 100 authors we know we’ll want in the catalog,” Pryde said. “Michael Connelly is on that list, so there was never a question of wanting the book.” The harder question was how many books they would want. At length, the library decided to order 175 books, 25 large-type books and 45 e-books.

Next, the order went to the technical services department, where coding was created that would identify “Desert Star” in the library’s system.

The order was finalized that May, and almost immediately “Desert Star” was added to the library’s catalog. As readers learned the book was coming, they added their names to the wait list for November.

Throughout the week of Oct. 31, 2022, boxes bearing the books arrived at each of the library’s 27 branches county-wide. Each copy had already been labeled with the tracking codes it would carry in the system.

On the morning of Nov. 8, 2022, the official release date, “Desert Star” began finding its way to library card-holders, many of whom had placed a hold on it months earlier.

To appreciate the complexity of a librarian’s life, appreciate this: “Desert Star” was just one of 21,000 new titles that were added to the library’s catalog that year.

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DeMeester-Lane said the year-end numbers confirmed many of the trends the library had been seeing for some time. Again, mystery was the dominant genre. Cookbooks headed the nonfiction list, with picture books leading the way in the children’s section.

Interest in science fiction and fantasy is growing. Three Colleen Hoover books were in the library’s Top 10 among e-books, proving that is romance still going strong.

DeMeester-Lane said the library is paying special attention to the growing popularity of e-books, and the changing marketplace for audiobooks.

“During the pandemic, interest in digital books really took off,” she recalled. “It made perfectly good sense that it would, since stores weren’t open and people weren’t going out, but we’re finding that interest is still growing. Last year, we had almost as many e-book readers as book readers.”

This is noteworthy, DeMeester-Lane said, because digital books are leased — not purchased — and are more expensive than books.

“As we look at future budgets, this could become a challenge. The life span of a hardback is 80 to 100 circulations. The digital books we lease often stop at 26.”

The market for audiobooks is even more uncertain, with the emergence of major streaming services such as Audible.

“We’re doing a lot right now to look at how people are using our collection so we can have what they want,” DeMeester-Lane said. “If we can keep doing that, we all win.”

FOOTNOTES

Library users checked out 2.97 million books across the three major formats last year.

The ever-growing popularity of e-books was evident. The library circulated some 1.1 million books, 1.0 million e-books and 877,000 audiobooks in 2023.

“Cocktails with George and Martha” will be in bookstores Tuesday, and author Philip Gefter will be in Tucson to talk about it Feb. 21 at the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd. Gefter’s book recounts the making of the movie “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Sponsored by the Tucson Festival of Books, the program will begin at 6:00 p.m. A screening of the movie will begin at 7:30. Admission is $10, $8 for members of the Loft. Learn more at tucne.ws/1p7p.