Readers' Advisory Paper

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.