Lesson 2 Reading Communities & Online RA Thoughts on the Reading

Fiction-L
I knew this existed and once in awhile we've used it to answer a tough RA question - usually one we treat as a reference question. I signed onto the listserv during this week's lesson for the digest version. I have looked at the entries briefly but just don't see the time to keep up with it. I also feel someone intimidated by the amount of author/RA knowledge these people have . . . but need to remind myself that the answers come from multiple librarians. One week I was thinking about a particular series and ah-ha moment came when reading the listserv . . . there was someone asking about the series: the female minister/cop mystery series: And the author is Spencer-Fleming, Julia and the characters are: Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne

LibraryThing
Here's what I wrote in the forum:
Are you using social networking book sites like LibraryThing and GoodReads as professional resources? If yes, in what ways are they helpful for RA purposes?

I'd looked at LibraryThing before, had thought I would use it, but forgot about it and didn't. It's good that you're including Web 2.0 things in this course. If we don't make an effort to use these - will we be as helpful to our customers as possible and/or marginalize ourselves. I did try to use LibraryThing for a recent book ref. question - customer wanted a book post-9/11 and teens in New York City - not necessarily about 9/11 but how life changed in the years since--fiction or nonfiction. I didn't really find much on LibraryThing compared to more traditional sources.

To add now later in the course - so I sound fairly disappointed in LibraryThing. However, I can add at the end of the course that I have found LibraryThing quite helpful. In doing the Reader Recommendations assignments for each lesson, I've turned to LibraryThing quite frequently. Tag searches have worked quite well for me and led me to titles or authors similar to the book I'd read for the assignment. The recommendations from LibraryThing and from members have been helpful and helped expand my knowledge of similar books to recommend - like a learning tree - you find a title and branch out to other titles and then onto other titles - and you don't get lost, you can always get back to the original book you were looking up. I also think that once the public gets accustomed to tags on many web sites, our library catalog searching, especially by subject, must seem very difficult and clunky and not likely to lead to quick, easy matches.

I do like the idea of creating tag clouds for Read-Alikes and hope to find the time to do this in 2009.

for my own information I copied my answers to the discussion forum:

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Having read about Web 2.0 what are some of the ways we can put the technology to use?

We are currently using blogs for our Readers Recommendations and Staff Picks as well as Hot Topics, which has nothing to do with RA--perhaps we should try "hot authors". It is a struggle for us to get readers to add to our website. Most of our reviews by readers are turned in on paper as part of the summer or winter adult reading programs. So, we're still frustrated about the lack of activity. Maybe finding a core group of people who will write reviews will provide our web site with a body (quantity) of reviews and a momentum to build a successful Web 2.0 reader reviews section. I'm thinking about: we have a local writers group - might they volunteer some reviews; maybe the schools would work with us and assign students for an assignment or extra credit to write reviews on our web site; maybe some of our steady customers could be approached . . . for example, one man requests interesting nonfiction . . . .

I like the idea of a tag cloud for Read-Alikes. The visual nature of a cloud seems more appealing to me as a user than scrolling through a list of authors. We have started a nonfiction "neighborhood" called Green Living. There's a massive bibliography of titles and hundreds of subject headings. I could see using Del.icio.us with the neighborhoods. Perhaps starting with our next neighborhood that will be smaller in terms of number of titles and subjects to give us a chance to play with Del.icio.us without being overwhelmed with content for our first try.



Are you using social networking book sites like LibraryThing and GoodReads as professional resources? If yes, in what ways are they helpful for RA purposes?

I'd looked at LibraryThing before, had thought I would use it, but forgot about it and didn't. It's good that you're including Web 2.0 things in this course. If we don't make an effort to use these - will we be as helpful to our customers as possible and/or marginalize ourselves. I did try to use LibraryThing for a recent book ref. question - customer wanted a book post-9/11 and teens in New York City - not necessarily about 9/11 but how life changed in the years since--fiction or nonfiction. I didn't really find much on LibraryThing compared to more traditional sources. I did sign up for FictionL because of this course and may send in the question there. To me, FictionL is a fabulous resource - if only the public knew librarians, as a group, know so much about reading and authors. They'd be amazed.



One of the strengths of these social networking resources is meeting the readers where they live. Though these are not your customers, can you think of ways they can help you help your readers?

Obviously, we can let people know about these but they are somewhat intimidating -- the volume -- number of reviews and reviewers; the brevity of some of the reviews - which may mean they don't really help enough to pick titles; the oddity of lists you'll get -- Harry Potter and classic literature. What I see in our library are people that ask for lists--what is popular -- so they don't miss out on a best-seller; ask for read-alikes; ask for "good" titles that haven't made the best-seller list. Could a library or a group of libraries try a more focused LibraryThing -- Wisconsin authors; books with Wisconsin settings, etc. Maybe Wisconsin isn't those most glamorous or popular thing to try but I'm still struggling with a winning idea to use the technology and bring people to our web site.