Macon-Bibb County had a budget scare earlier this year that nearly eliminated public libraries in the county.

Now that they’re back up and running, I started wondering how exactly libraries function — where do their books come from? How do they decide which ones to stock, and what are their most popular genres?

I spoke with Tim Spishock, a reference librarian in charge of the computer lab and computer classes at the county’s largest library branch, the Washington Memorial Library.

“Generally, we’ll have several suppliers that we’ll go through,” Spishock said. “Like Midwest Tape, we use…then, Baker & Taylor is one of our main book sources that we use.”

He said the library will occasionally order materials through Amazon Business, but only under circumstances where it cannot be found anywhere else.

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