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.
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