Krystal Taylor
Prof. Genovese
4/25/2013
Readers’ Advisory
“Readers’
advisory service…is a patron-centered library service for adult leisure
readers. A successful readers’ advisory service is one in which knowledgeable,
nonjudgmental staff help fiction and nonfiction readers with their
leisure-reading needs” (Saricks, 2005). With this assignment, I attempted to
provide the best knowledgeable and nonjudgmental readers’ advisory that I
could. Because I don’t work in library yet, I decided to create a readers’
advisory survey and pass it out to some people that I work with and a facebook
friend. The people filled out the surveys, returned them to me, and then I
compiled a list of five suggested titles using a combination of: NoveList,
Goodreads, and Amazon.com. The reading suggestions I created included: a title,
a picture of the cover, the reason for the title suggest, and a plot synopsis. Four
of the patrons stated that I did a good job with my suggestions, while the
fifth has yet to respond to my requests for feedback.
The
first person I provided readers’ advisory service was to Subject B. Subject B
is a 23 year old male that I work with. His favorite types of books are
fantasy, action, and adventure. I purposefully wrote “types of books” instead
of “genres” as a way to avoid jargon and make the survey more easily
understood. Subject B’s least favorite types of books are romance and mystery.
His favorite authors are Evelyn Waugh and the author of the book “the right to
destroy myself.” I had looked up and found that the actual book is called I Have the Right to Destroy Myself and
is by Young-Ha Kim. Subject B is the subject that has not gotten back to me
yet. He is also a student at IUPUI and has finals coming up, so I’m sure he’ll
get back to me when he has more free time.
Subject
C was a friend I haven’t seen or talked to in a long time and I asked if I
could enlist her help in this project through Facebook. She is 24 years old and
is a manager at a security firm. She told me her email address so I emailed her
the survey and she filled out the form and emailed it back. Her favorite types
of books are mystery, romance, and fantasy and she really enjoys dialogue, a
fast-paced plot, and suspense in her books. Her least favorite books are
biographies and her favorite authors are: Lisa Kleypas, Judith McNaught, and
Stephen King. She doesn’t care about violence, romance, or curse words in her
books and the most recent book she read was The
Gunslinger. Her feedback was through Facebook chat. One of the recommended
titles I wasn’t too sure about because it seemed a little dated, but that ended
up being the title she read and loved.
Subject
H is a 37 year old female coworker. Her favorite types of books are romance,
fiction, psychology, biographies, religion, and self-improvement. Her least
favorite types of books are: horror, science fiction, politics, and westerns.
Her favorite authors are: Nicholas Sparks, Jodi Picoult, Emily Griffin, Nora
Roberts, and Kristan Higgins. She said that a little violence is okay, steamy
romance is fine (as long as it isn’t pornography), and she doesn’t care about
curse words. The most recent book she read was Nicholas Sparks’s Safe Haven. She had not had a chance to
read any of the titles yet, but she read the plot summaries and said that all
of them looked so good she put them all on her “wish list” for her Nook.
Subject
J is a 26 year old female who happens to be married to a coworker of mine. I
asked the coworker if he would like to take the survey and he said no, but his
wife would. Her favorite types of books are historical fiction and fantasy and
her least favorite types of books are mystery. Her favorite authors are Diana
Gabaldon, Jane Austin, and Traci Peterson. She doesn’t care about violence, but
doesn’t want steamy romance and doesn’t want the curse words to over-run the
story. The last book she read was Voyager by Diana Gabaldon. She Facebook
messaged me a few days later saying that the titles looked great and she was
really excited to read The Stars for a Light by Lynn and Gilbert Morris.
Subject
L is a 30 year old female coworker. Her favorite types of books are: romance,
paranormal romance, mystery, fantasy, and erotica. She does not like anything
“boring” which she said included school books and anything that “has to be
done, not enjoyed.” Her favorite authors are: Lora Leigh, Sherrilyn Kenyon,
Christina Dodd, Lori Foster, L.J. Smith, J.R. Ward, Jaci Burton, Stephanie
Meyer, Charlaine Harris, Lynsay Sands, and E.L. James. She doesn’t care about the violence or curse words
but wanted steamy romance. The most recent books she had read were Play by Play by Jaci Burton, the Fifty Shades series, and Sherrilyn
Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series. This
subject is an avid reader. She reads about 10-15 books a week. She said that I
did a great job with the title recommendations. So good, in fact, that she’d
already read two of the titles: A Hunger
Like No Other and Dark Prince.
She was shocked she forgot to put Christine Feehan on her list of favorite
authors. She was impressed that I was able to suggest a few authors she’d never
heard of and she said that she read and loved the Katie MacAlister book that
was recommended. She said that it was as funny as a Lynsay Sands book.
This
project was really fun and I’m glad that I was capable of suggesting titles
that the subjects enjoyed. One thing that I found was that it was more
difficult to suggest titles to people the better I knew them. I found myself
wading through titles suggested by NoveList and discarding them based on plot
summaries found on Goodreads. I did the surveys based on the “Personalized”
readers’ advisory services that public libraries are offering now, but I think
my survey should have gone a little more in-depth. I forgot to ask what the
subjects liked about their favorite types of books, and I found that also made
it more difficult to find them books based on generic genre titles. One book I
suggested to Subject B was a fantasy that I thought he’d like just because it
was very popular right now and was a “fantasy” title.
References
Saricks, J. G. (2005). Readers' advisory service in the
public library. Chicago:
American Library Association.
Classic Pick: God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
X 7
Nonfiction Work: Rick Steve's Ireland
YA Pick: Divergent by Veronica Roth