Week 16 Prompt

Books and reading have changed surprisingly little for me since I was young. I read avidly as soon as I was able to, and have continued doing so. My reading habits have gone through phases, of course, as I assume most people's have. I had a literary classics kick and a period of time where I desperately tried to enjoy reading Thomas Pynchon, but now I tend toward reading science fiction and poetry. College helped open my eyes to the literary forms of poetry and graphic novels, and my interest in both of those has continued since college. In terms of format, however, the biggest change from my younger self's reading habits to my own is how I access reading materials. My local public library offers Hoopla and Overdrive access to library card holders, and I have used these quite a lot to access audiobooks. When I was younger, I listened to audiobooks occasionally, but I only ever reread books as audiobooks (and mostly just the Harry Potter series, which came in doorstopper sized cassette tape collections); now I enjoy experiencing books for the first time in their audio format. I haven't found myself embracing the ebook format, and doubt I ever will, but I have nothing against it and think it's a valuable alternative to printed book format.

As for the future of books, reading, and publishing, I don't anticipate any seismic shifts in the way we read and consume printed media. The internet and ebooks have been around for long enough now that they have become just another part of the reading landscape, and I think if the majority of the public was going to stop reading physical books altogether because of the allure of more attention-grabbing, passive material it would have done so already. I'm sure that reading is generally less popular than it was 30 years ago, but physical book publishing is still going strong, and I don't anticipate it going anywhere soon. The main concern I have about the future of the publishing industry is its environmental impact. As we face increasingly devastating human-made climate change, I think it is important that we reexamine all of our consumption habits, and that includes how we produce and purchase reading material. I think e-reader technology will advance greatly in the next 20 years and hopefully more people (including myself) will learn to love it and recognize that embracing it is a good step toward being an ecologically responsible consumer. My biggest concern about the state of reading 20 years in the future is that our increasing reliance on screens will continue to lower our collective attention spans to the point where reading books will be increasingly difficult in a world where most of our media is passive entertainment. However, I think there will always be a place in our culture for people who enjoy the challenge of reading and the satisfaction of delving deeply into the written words of others.

Week 15 Prompt

Three Ideas for Marketing Readers' Advisory

1. Shelf Talkers - A strategy recommended by Carrol (n.d.) in which books are placed with their covers facing out for passing readers to see, and accompany them with brief reviews, blurbs, or recommendations from library staff. I have seen this strategy used to great effect in bookstores, and I think the concept is even more appealing in a context like a library in which you don't have to be wary about being advertised to so you will buy something! Saricks (2005) points out that the majority of readers looking for a good book in the library are browsers, roaming the shelves for something that looks appealing, and Shelf Talkers are designed to engage with them.

2. Online Readers' Advisory Service - Just as many libraries have "Ask a Librarian" chat applications embedded in their web pages, Burke and Strothmann (2015) recommend that having a chat box marked "Looking for a Good Book?" or something similar can engage with readers who might never set foot in the library or who might be anxious about having a face-to-face conversation with a readers' advisory librarian. Librarians doing readers' advisory work can feel a little more at ease as they take their time trying to find the best possible recommendations for the patron rather than feeling rushed by the need to produce a fast result.

3. Themed Social Media Posts - At the library where I work, we create displays of books that fit certain themes, and then I create daily social media posts that give either a sample sentence, a brief blurb, or a short review of one of the books in the display posted with a picture of the book's cover. This has worked extremely well, both as a tool for making patrons aware of the library's books for, say, Black History Month, as well as for making me more aware of the library's collection. As I spend time with the books I post about, I learn more about the range of materials we have in our various collections and I feel more confident about recommending books to patrons in the future.

Works Cited

Burke, S. K., & Strothmann, M. (2015). Adult Readers' Advisory Services through Public Library Websites. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 55(2), 132-143.

Carrol, Bill. (n.d.) Don’t Talk to Me: Passive Readers’ Advisory. Retrieved from https://www.statelibraryofiowa.org/ld/c-d/continuing-ed/iloc/copy_of_iloc-2016/handouts/dont-talk-to-me/donttalktome.pdf 

Saricks, J. (2005) Promoting and marketing readers’ advisory collections and services. In Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library. Chicago: ALA. 136-160.  

Week 14 Prompt

I would advocate for shelving Urban Fiction separately from general fiction, but leaving LGBTQ fiction intershelved with other fiction.

Reason 1: Urban Fiction is a genre, while LGBTQ Fiction refers to the identity of the author writing it. Of course, LGBTQ authors will tend to explore issues related to their own experience in their writing, but these aspects of identity exist independent from genre. Urban Fiction should be separated from General Fiction for the same reason that mysteries should; readers tend to read and enjoy books from specific genres, and shelving books by general genre categories makes them easier to find and browse.

Reason 2: It is impractical to try to separate the shelving location for books based on the identity of their author or the presence of LGBTQ-related stories. Where should you draw the line about what qualifies a book to be “LGBTQ Fiction”? Is it the presence of one queer character? Is it whether the author has publicly come out as queer? Does it include homoerotic undertones in literary classics? Whatever criteria is used will be too inclusive for some readers and too exclusive for others. Shelving by genre is not always a straightforward process either, but it is much easier than trying to shelve based on identity because you can make certain assumptions about the readers looking for books in the genre that you can’t make otherwise. With Urban Fiction, there are general settings, story types, character archetypes, and physical indicators (like cover art and publisher) that can be used to distinguish the books.

Reason 3: Intershelving LGBTQ Fiction normalizes LGBTQ experiences. By cordoning off LGBTQ stories and media, we “other” it and label it as deviant in some way from the larger collection of “normal” fiction. If we intend to work toward a more just society in which people are not stigmatized for seeking out certain types of information or simply being a certain way, we must work to normalize inclusion of experiences different from the majority. I still think, however, that it would be helpful to have a way to direct readers who are specifically interested in books relating to gender, sexuality, and identity to books that would interest them, so I would encourage the library to begin adding a subject heading like “Gender, Sexuality, and Identity” to the OPAC records for any books whose content addresses those issues in one form or another. This will also aid readers’ advisory librarians in their work as they look for titles appropriate to readers questioning their gender or challenging social structures.

African American Annotations: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing 

Yaa Gyasi

Genre: Historical fiction, Family chronicle, African American


Publication date: 2016


Number of pages: 320


Geographical setting: Ghana, Alabama, Harlem


Time Period: 1760 - present

Plot Summary: In mid-18th century Ghana, British colonization has turned the world into a dangerous place for Effia and Esi, two Ghanaian half-siblings living in a village in close proximity to a British outpost. Effia marries a British soldier while Esi is captured and sold into slavery, and their respective lives, as well as the lives of their descendants, are recounted in this inter-generational chronicle. Each chapter provides a snapshot of an important time in the life of a different character in the family tree as the reader explores the lasting repercussions of racism, colonialism, and slavery.


Subject Headings: Slavery, Colonialism, Intergenerational, Ghana


Appeal:

• Pacing: moderate, steady
• Tone: tragic, haunting
• Writing Style: broad, sweeping, descriptive
  

Read-a-likes:

• Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi - an intergenerational story of a Kenyan family that spans hundreds of years of history, from a tragic accident in 1750 that brings a curse upon the family all the way through the early 2000s.
• There There by Tommy Orange - a novel following the lives and stories of twelve different people making their way to the Big Oakland Powwow and focusing on the struggles of Native Americans who have had their lands forcibly stolen from them.
• The Hundred Wells of Salaga by Ayesha Harruna Attah - a story set in pre-colonial Ghana following the wildly different lives of two women. This novel grapples with the politics and society of the time period as well as abuse and romance.
  

Related authors: 

• Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Imbolo Mbue

LGBTQ Annotation: Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

Ammonite

Nicola Griffith

Genre: Science fiction, LGBTQ, Adventure

Publication date: 2002

Number of pages: 360

Geographical setting: A planet known as "Jeep"

Time period: An unspecified time in the distant future

Plot summary: Humanity has attempted to colonize a distant planet called Jeep, but encountered a virus that wiped out a large percentage of the population and killed all men who set foot on the planet. The surviving members of the colony have dispersed across the planet except for a few that stay behind to maintain a military outpost. Marghe, a linguistic anthropologist, volunteers to travel to Jeep and study its inhabitants, but quickly leaves the protection of the outpost to join the planet's native inhabitants who have developed a mysterious symbiosis with the world's virus. This is a story of love, exploration, and hardship as Marghe travels the planet and faces a transformation that leaves her changed forever.

Subject headings: Sociology, Viruses, Gender roles, Extraterrestrial anthropology


Appeal:

• Pacing: Leisurely with bursts of speed
• Tone: Mysterious, though-provoking, adventurous
• Writing Style: Poetic, descriptive, compelling
  

Read-a-likes:

• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin - this novel explores similar issues to Ammonite, exploring gender on a hostile, icy planet. LeGuin's novel is more interested in social and political situations that arise as a result of gender fluidity and an alien planet, and less focused on adventure than Ammonite is.
• China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh - a story exploring a futuristic American society in which China has become the dominant world power. This novel focuses on characterization against a science fiction setting, and features queer relationships.
• Daughters of a Coral Dawn by Katherine V. Forrest - the story of a group of women who escape an oppressive patriarchal society to begin a new life in a matriarchal society of their own design on a distant planet.

Related authors:

• Ursula K. Le Guin
• Elizabeth Bear
• Mary Doria Russell
  

Week 13 Prompt

As readers’ advisory librarians, we should definitely work to ensure that we can help adult readers in search of young adult and graphic novels. We should not shame readers for reading young adult novels, because although they are marketed to a younger audience, they are not of intrinsically worse quality than other books. There are certain prevalent themes in young adult novels such as not fitting in and coming of age, and I would describe these themes as being universal, and not just limited to a certain age range. Young adult novels range widely in writing quality just as all books do, and we should include young adult fiction reviewing sites and publications in the resources we use for regular readers’ advisory work. We should also try to expand our reading into the young adult genre (if we haven’t already) so as to get a better sense of the landscape of contemporary young adult writing. As Booth (2005) points out, teenage readers just want good stories like the rest of us, and do not want to be moralized to.

Graphic novels are a whole medium containing a wide variety of genres, so it would be ignorant to dismiss them as “childish” or unworthy of attention for readers’ advisory. There are graphic novels targeted at young adults, children, and adults, and I think it’s helpful for us to read widely in these different genres to get a sense of unique appeal factors. For example, in graphic novels the art style can be just as big an appeal factor as the story itself, and patrons may have preferences: one person might like graphic novels with a strictly realistic art style and another might enjoy more figurative, unrealistic drawing. If we don’t regularly read graphic novels as part of our readers’ advisory work, we won’t be able to identify these appeal factors and properly recommend good graphic novels to our patrons.

Works Cited

Booth, H. (2005). RA for YA: Tailoring the Readers Advisory Interview to the Needs of Young Adult Patrons. Public Libraries, 44(1), 33-36.