Reader's Advisory

I went to an absolutely excellent workshop on Saturday. It was put on by Simmons College GSLIS Continuing Ed, taught by Shelley Quezada.

Reader's Advisory is that craft by which librarians, using their experience and expertise in Genre Fiction (and NonFiction) and electronic and text tools, guide readers in selecting books to read according to their interests and preference. Which is a long and complicated way of saying "helping people find books to read." The most exciting part of this is that with the proper study and tools, a librarian can guide readers toward books she hasn't read herself and would prefer not to.

Shelley's enthusiasm was contagious, and I left the workshop with a tremendous amount of material to go over and use in building my own Reader's Advisor skills. One of the handouts was a list of 5 books in each of 15 genres, suggested by Joyce Saricks (author of Readers' Advisory Service in the Public Library) as a challenge to familiarize ourselves with each genre.

Which is why the next book I'll be mentioning here is Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler.