Introduction to Alaska Digital Resources - Lesson 3 : Reader's Advisory

I must admit, I've been dreading this assignment a little bit.  I've always felt very unqualified when it comes to readers' advisory -- I like what I like, but I don't feel comfortable suggesting authors or books to others.  Opinions are subjective, and pleasure reading is so personal.  We all have different preferences, points of view, and backgrounds. 

1)  Using the read-alike feature in NoveList is intriguing.  I've been poking around for a while, and it's hard to say how accurate the recommendations are without reading all the suggested books.  I have seen a few recommendations that are good, though.  One book I really enjoyed recently was "Winter's Bone," by Daniel Woodrell.  One of the read-alike recommendations was "To Kill a Mockingbird," which is one of my favorite books.  They are linked because they both have a strong, young female at the center of the story.  It is interesting that each book I put into the system was identified as "character driven."  Aren't they all?  I guess not ... I finally put in one that's considered "Plot driven."  That makes sense; when I think back on it, I remember the story more than I remember individual characters.  The series recommendations seem possibly helpful.  I'm not that crazy about the read-alike recommendations, since they're only as good as the subject headings and other tags.  It's better than nothing, and I could totally see myself using this to help someone find a book, I'm just skeptical that its recommendations are spot-on.  At least it helps give someone a handful of options; that way, they can take the suggestions and evaluate several books to see if they're a good fit.  Now that I've said that, the author suggestions are looking more interesting to me than the book suggestions.

2) OK, saved 'em.

3)  Ah, that's a nice feature. After searching an author and using the series tab, when you click on the resulting title, that brings you a list of books in series order.

4)  Wow, there are some good resources here. I could see the book discussion guides being useful to book groups or the featured book display ideas coming in handy in libraries.

Article:  I'll get back to that later.