Cynthia Orr - Crash Course in Readers Advisory

Crash Course in Readers' Advisory

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Crash Course in Library Services to Preschool Children
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Crash Course in Public Administration
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Crash Course in Genealogy
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Crash Course in Family Literacy Programs
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Crash Course in Services for Seniors
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Crash Course in Strategic Planning
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Crash Course in Gaming
Suellen S. Adams

Crash Course in Dealing with Difficult Library Customers
Shelley E. Mosley, Dennis C. Tucker, and Sandra Van Winkle

Crash Course in Children's Services, Second Edition
Penny Peck

Crash Course in Collection Development, Second Edition
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Crash Course in Marketing for Libraries, Second Edition
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Cynthia Orr

Crash Course

Copyright 2015 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Orr, Cynthia.
Crash course in readers' advisory / Cynthia Orr.
pages cm. (Crash course)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61069-825-2 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-61069-826-9 (ebook)
1. Readers' advisory services. I. Title.
Z711.55.O77 2015
025.5'4dc23 2014027064

ISBN: 978-1-61069-825-2
EISBN: 978-1-61069-826-9

19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5

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This book is meant to be a crash course on the topic of readers' advisory service in the library; but what is readers' advisory service? Joyce Saricks, whose 1989 book Readers' Advisory Service in the Public Library , set off what has been called a readers' advisory renaissance, said that readers' advisory service is "a patron-centered library service for adult fiction readers." In her words, the readers' advisor provides the "vital link between the library's fiction material and readers" (Saricks, p. 1). Traditionally, children's and young adult librarians, in their library school courses, have spent far more time learning about the literature for children than those who aspire to serve adults in libraries after they graduate. Thus, the emphasis on adult readers proposed by Saricks makes sense; children's librarians have always been deeply involved with children's books and have considered that to be a vital part of their identity. This has not been true for most librarians who do not expect to work with children.

For the purposes of this book, we will deal mainly with service to adult readers, though in the intervening years since the book by Saricks came out, most readers' advisors, including Saricks herself, would agree that the definition should include service to adult nonfiction readers as well, at least those who read nonfiction for recreational purposes, and increasingly, readers' advisors are extending the definition to include not only books, but movies, audiobooks, and music as well. In addition, many adults enjoy books intended for young adults, and this trend seems to be gaining momentum, so readers' advisors increasingly include young adult works under the RA umbrella.

S. R. Ranganathan, in his classic book of 1931, The Five Laws of Library Science , outlined his ideal of library service. Most library school students have been exposed to Ranganathan's laws:

1. Books are for use.
2. Every reader, his book.
3. Every book, its reader.
4. Save the time of the reader.
5. A library is a growing organism.

Borrowing from Ranganathan, we could say that what a readers' advisor should try to do is match books to readers and readers to books, as in Laws 2 and 3. We librarians should be pondering, as new books come across our desks, what kind of reader might like each book, so that we can match every book to its reader. If every reader has his or her book, then we should also be thinking about which titles each of our patrons might enjoy.

Readers' advisory service means knowing about books and knowing about readers, then using professional judgment and specific techniques during the readers' advisory interview with patrons to successfully suggest matches of books to readers and readers to books. After that, the advisor describes each of the books and why they might appeal to this reader. That is the readers' advisory transaction in a nutshell. How exactly we can do that is the subject of the next chapters.

Think of all the work that goes into getting a library book onto the shelf. An author struggles to choose a subject, get an agent, then a publisher, produce a manuscript, slog through the editing and revising process, and then when it's finally published, works hard to promote the title. The publisher tries to design a great cover and a good title, spends significant staff time on editing, pays for publicity, solicits reviews, and sends the book out into the world. Then review media assign the book to their reviewers, who dutifully read it and write their own reviews, which then have to be put into a magazine or website or blog or database, and published. Librarians then carefully read the reviews, think about their budget, their clientele, their collection, and mission, and choose to purchase this book from the reviews. After that, other library staff members order the book, which the publisher has meanwhile sent to wholesalers, who themselves put great effort into warehousing, promoting, and supplying the title, and the book is shipped from the publisher to the wholesaler to the library, where it is then paid for and processed, having been first lovingly cataloged by the Library of Congress or someone from one of the OCLC member libraries, or a librarian on staff. It's processed with a jacket cover and appropriate labels, stamps, and security tags, and it is put onto the shelf. In a large system, it may be shipped out to a branch on a delivery truck, where it is unpacked and perused, perhaps by the person who selected it in the first place, and then shelved in that one particular spot where it belongs so that it can be retrieved by readers who will hope to enjoy it for the purposes its author intended.

What a labor-intensive process! How sad is it, if after all that work, this book's perfect readers never find it because they are overwhelmed by the prospect of choosing a good book from among the tens of thousands in the library stacks. What a waste of all those resources!

Conversely, in order for readers to find a good book to read, they need to overcome many obstacles as well. First they need to hear about a book, or come across it by browsing, then decide to read it, find a copy in the library, perhaps place a hold, wait for it to come in, and then go to the library during open hours to pick it up. How sad if readers, having surmounted all these barriers blocking them from their goal of becoming lost in a book, don't get a chance to read that perfect book, the one that will change their lives, the one that they will buy and cherish and hand down to their children, or the one that they might read over and over and enjoy just as much each time. Instead they completely miss it because they just don't know how to choose a book they will like.