Week 5: Building Base Knowledge Continued

Assignment 1: Follow Up

                I despise the USA Todays’ Happily Ever After blog. Specifically, I find the layout with one third of the page devoted to Twitter to be poorly contrived. I find everything about this format distracting. It would probably function better on a smart phone. Perhaps if the Twitter was on a sidebar scroll it would not be so brightly distracting.  The actual content is useful in term of reader’s advisory; however, when I went to recommend a few books that looked good BCPL did not have a copy.  

NPR’s top seller lists are wicked useful especially if they link to an interview for reader’s advisory.  I find myself more comfortable recommending books on the list if I have heard an author interview or a review. The other day a patron was looking for a good spy novel and I was able to recommend an author he had not tried and the wait list for The Billion Dollar Spy. Which he said I had him at the "true story of a CIA source in soviet Russia".

 Assignment 2: Early Word

             One of the in demand authors at Randallstown is James Patterson while the in demand genre is Urban Fiction. Many of the summer readers tend to lean towards How to Train Your Dragon or other stories with a fantastical elements.  After pursuing Early Word I think I will use the downloadable Best Seller list from the past two years to make recommendations for books on the shelf in Randallstown as we tend to not have many of the new in demand items on shelf. This way I can recommend a similar title the patron might have overlooked while the book is shipped from another branch. I spot checked ten random books from the 2014 list and six were on the self in branch.  I like that you can download an excel table to sort by author, title or genre. This is by far the most usefully feature I have found.

 Assignment 3: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

            Toni Morrison called this book “required reading.” Coates will appeal to many readers not just as a local, but as a local that has written a series of timely letters to his son explaining his own history dealing with racism in America and systemic racism built into many facets of society. His work is insightful yet blunt. A style that should appeal to many readers. The author was recently interview by John Stewart on The Daily Show.