Learning about Readers’ Advisory outside of graduate school

1.    Get a copy of Joyce Saricks’ book, Readers’ Advisory in the Public Library, 3rd edition 2005 and read it cover to cover.  It will be the single most useful work you can read on how to provide readers’ advisory services. 

2.    Get a copy of Genreflecting (6th edition, 2004) by Diana Tixier Herald.  If it’s the only reference readers’ advisory book or resource you or your library can afford, this is the best choice as it covers all areas of leisure reading.  Use it to help your patrons find new books.  Use it yourself to learn about unfamiliar genres and get ideas of books to read.  It will help you in learning how to think about connections between books.   

3.    To understand the research behind readers’ advisory services, and research about different users of readers’ advisory services, get a copy of Research Bases Readers’ Advisory by Jessica E. Moyer.  All chapters include a thorough research review and a practitioners view and cover readers’ advisory for children and teens, audiobook listeners, romance and other genre readers, bookgroups, and the important behind the scenes work of collection development and cataloging and classification. 

4.    If your library already has access to Novelist, learn how to use it.  Read all the materials in the “For Librarians Section” and contact Novelist if you want additional help.  This one of the earliest, longest lasting and best online resources for readers’ advisory.  Your library may have access to Novelist and not know it.  Check your EBSCO subscription, as Novelist is an EBSCO product and often included in consortium packages.  Novelist is often an inexpensive addition to an existing EBSCO subscription through the state library or regional consortium.  It is worth the money.  It is a good source for answering questions like, “I’ve read the first Evan Evans book, Evans Above, which one comes next?” and next month’s follow-up, “I’ve read all the Evan Evans books now and really liked them, can you suggest another series?” and the professional development materials are an excellent source for further individual training and development. 

5.    Look for readers’ advisory associations.  Many metro areas have readers’ advisory groups such as the Adult Reading Round Table (ARRT) in the Chicago area.  For a small annual fee you can join these groups.  Many provide training materials and have regular professional development training sessions.  For example, ARRT recently completely a two year long study of nonfiction.  If there isn’t one in your area, you can still benefit from the materials on various groups websites.  ARRT’s webpage can be found at: http://www.arrtreads.org/. Check out the Fantasy Genre Study page at: http://www.arrtreads.org/fantasygenrestudy.htm.

6.    Join the fiction-l mailing list.  “Fiction_L is an electronic mailing list devoted to reader's advisory topics such as book discussions, booktalks, collection development issues, booklists and bibliographies.” (From the fiction-l webpage, http://www.webrary.org/rs/flmenu.html). Fiction-l is an active list so be prepared for as many as 50 messages a day.  I find the best way to follow lists like this is to use the rules and folders option in your email program and filter all messages directly into a fiction-l folder. I find gmail to be the best program for keeping up with active lists like fiction-l as it does a great job keeping all messages in the same thread together. 

7.    Read!  Read some more!  Read as much as you can in all areas of interest to your patrons.  Nothing replaces personal knowledge of books and authors when talking with readers.  Advanced tip: learn how to read a book in 10 minutes.  Check out this website for details: http://bookbitch.com/READERS%20ADVISORY.htm (about 1/3 of the way down the page) or here: http://researchbasedra.pbwiki.com/How+to+Read+a+Book+in+10+Minutes