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Week 15 Prompt What do you think are the best ways to market your library's fiction collection? Name and describe three ways you do or would like to market your library or your future library's fiction. These can be tools, programs, services, displays - anything that you see as getting the word out. Three ways to  market  library fiction: 1. Good Old Fashioned Displays The most basic, old school low tech way to market a fiction collection is a display that invites the eye and prompts browsing. This can be a timely holiday display, a themed display centered around a topic, or a display organized like a bookstore, with outward facing books and signage. One of the pleasures of visiting a library is the serendipity factor of discovery. Displays facilitate serendipity.  One note on this, display cases that require a library staff member to unlock the case to get a book out for a patron are not browsing friendly!  (I create...

"How have reading and books changed since you were a child, for you specifically?" Reflecting on Reading and Me Me Me: Eugen Spiro During my childhood reading was an escape and a refuge and a venue for learning, and eventually an act of identity creation. In elementary school, I read voraciously about dinosaurs and went to church on Sundays with my grandfather and read the Bible. Later, in about third grade, I identified conflicting narratives and took the first steps to be an atheist. (Science won, but I still love a good story.) In fifth grade, I read  A Wrinkle in Time  and identified with Meg when I was bullied and lost my father to emphysema.  Found on Pinterest In the 90’s, I read Christopher Hitchens and learned how to view the world oppositionally and critically, to be assertive and confident to express opinions contradictory to received thought, to reject authority and mock sacred cows. (Like Mother Theresa, what a bish!) I got s...

For your prompt this week, please complete the Readers' Advisory Matrix, found on the last page of the reading title "RA Guide to Nonfiction" in the Canvas files, about a non-fiction book you have read. If you have not read a non-fiction book recently, feel free to use some of the techniques on how to "read" a book in five minutes such as Mary Chelton's handouts or any others we have covered to get a feel for a non-fiction book. I look forward to reading these! Author : Timothy Snyder Title : On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century Publication date : 2017 Number of pages : 126 Geographic setting : N/A Time period : 20 th and 21 st century Subject headings : Despotism. History, Modern—20 th century. Political ethics. Democracy—United States. Political culture—United States. Type : Book Series notes : N/A Book Summary : An essay divided into twenty sections on lessons from past episodes in hi...

For our prompt this week, I want you to think about fake memoirs, author mills (James Patterons), and celebrity inspired book clubs. Basically write a readers' response to one of the articles you are reading for this week (see syllabus or links in this post for readings) - or talk about a time when a book or author that made headlines affected you personally or your work. Reflection  Fake memoirs and "misery lit" hoaxes perpetuate a fraud on the reader who invests more emotional weight in the account due to its perceived authenticity. For some readers, this deception may be very painful, like a betrayal. (Particularly if the memoir details abuse, or recovery from addiction.) My personal response to these hoxes is usually a psychic eyeroll and a mental shrug. It comes as no surprise to me that fake memoirs like James Frey's A Million Little Pieces (2003) were initially submitted for publication and rejected classified as fiction. Some might say, "Wha...

Integrated advisory, "...is a whole new way of looking at and thinking about library materials that incorporates the techniques of readers' advisory and the multiple media that make up modern library collections." Romance readers are experts in their genre, and they are also aware of niche markets within the genre, or subgenres, which can include historical romance, or paranormal romance. As a reader, I enjoy time travel romance. Time travel romance combines multiple appeal factors, time travel, historical fiction, fish out of water narratives, resilient female characters, adventure, and culture clashes that lead to tension. By creating a display that features books that fit or cross over into this subgenre, it might be possible to draw in readers who might not otherwise seek out romance as a  genre at all. To qualify the book must involve time travel and romance, that is all. Reincarnation, past lives and cyborgs who travel forward in time and are immortal cou...

    E-book only books, which are increasingly popular (especially in the romance genre) see little to no reviews in professional publications unless they have a big name author, and then still it’s usually only RT Reviews or other genre heavy publications. How does this affect collection development?   Look over the reviews- do you feel they are both reliable? How likely would you be to buy this book for your library?    How do these reviews make you feel about the possibility of adding Angela’s Ashes to your collection? Do you think it’s fair that one type of book is reviewed to death and other types of books get little to no coverage? How does this affect a library’s collection? And how do you feel about review sources that won’t print negative content? Do you think that’s appropriate? If you buy for your library, how o...