Collecting Poetry for the Academic Library: An Evaluation of Poetry Prizes as Selection Tools by Liorah Golomb Available online 24 March 2011 This paper examines the usefulness of poetry book prizes as a selection tool by evaluating their fairness, meaningfulness, and reliability as an indication of quality. The results of two surveys, one collecting data on poetry book prizes and the other asking librarians about their collecting practices, suggest that selecting on the basis of prizes is of limited value. Liorah Golomb, The University of Oklahoma, 401 West Brooks Street, Room 149, Norman, OK 73019-6030, USA <lgolomb@ou.edu>. T he difficulties in selecting poetry for an academic library are several. The sheer number of books published is daunting. Over 500 volumes of poetry were published in the United States in 2009—a figure that is probably very conservative. 1 In 1991 noted poet and critic Dana Gioia claimed that “just under a thousand new collections of verse are published each year”—and this was before the proliferation of self-publishing. 2 There are a number of prizes awarded to volumes of poetry, and this might seem a reasonable way to narrow the field. This article examines the usefulness of poetry prizes as a selection tool by evaluating their fairness, meaningfulness, and reliability as an indication of quality. As part of this examination, a survey of 65 poetry prizes was conducted and will be discussed in detail below. Further, this article discusses the ways in which subject specialist librarians select contem- porary American poetry, including which tools they find most and least valuable. To gather this information, literature librarians responded to an anonymous survey. These results are also discussed below. The ideal selection tool for poetry, many subject specialists would agree, would be our own judgment: read a bit of a poet's work before making the decision to purchase the book (see discussion below). Few librarians in any subject area have the luxury to follow this ideal. The next best option for selecting literary works is usually book reviews. CHOICE Online, which is geared toward research and academic libraries, does not publish poetry reviews on a regular basis; it published only one review of a 2009 single-author volume of poetry, and that one was by the literary giant John Updike. Library Journal publishes considerably more: in 2009 it reviewed 69 volumes of new poetry. More in-depth poetry reviews regularly appear in literary magazines and those dedicated to reviews of new literature such as Rain Taxi. A librarian might have to buy his own subscription, however. According to WorldCat, Rain Taxi is available in only 22 libraries in the United States. Where reviews do exist, their value is questionable. Kevin Prufer, a poet and editor of the literary journal Pleiades, noted, “I conducted an informal poll of poetry reviews and found that 92% of them were entirely positive, with not one note of criticism. Yet I know that 92% of poetry books published today are not masterpieces.” 3 Further complicating the task of selection is the reality that in many libraries, the person responsible for selecting contemporary American poetry may have little or no familiarity with the subject. This author has seen only a few positions in academic libraries for humanities librarians or English literature bibliographers advertised during each of the past 5 years. Even a librarian with a degree in English may have focused her studies on an altogether different genre or time period. LITERATURE REVIEW Very few academic libraries in the United States collect poetry comprehensively, so choices must be made. 4 If reviews from established sources are scarce and unreliable, what other tools do librarians use to select poetry? Library literature is quiet on best practices for making The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 37, Number 3, pages 207–214 May 2011 207