4. 3
3
2
2
Years Doing Lists
Less than 1
Two
Three - Five
More than Five
Six of the ten libraries surveyed have
been creating personalized lists for
two years or less.
11. Who creates lists?
Mostly librarians
Smaller libraries usually only
have one or two staff members
Larger libraries have a pool of
librarians
Most libraries have a joint email or
ticketing system
Librarians generally choose what lists to
complete
12. But I don’t read science fiction…
Where to find reading recommendations
Other librarians’ lists (we’ll get to that next
slides)
Novelist
GoodReads
Your catalog’s “if you likes”
Amazon “Customers who bought this item”
Professional reviews/blogs
Google
Other staff
13. Reinventing the wheel
How to store for similar future requests
Have a dedicated email folder
or shared drive accessible by all
Store in Bibliocommons or
Encore
Some libraries are using
Bookletters to create and store
14. I’d do this…
Suggestions from other libraries
If you have Bibliocommons or
Encore, build your lists there. You
can then make it public for other
people.
If multiple librarians are compiling
forms, have a checklist to ensure
consistency
For teen or kid lists, check
commonsensemedia.org to check
on violence, profanity, sex, etc.
15. Have a print form too available
in branches
Have a limit to how many genres
people can check
Have fun with it!
I’d do this…
Suggestions from other libraries
21. “I liked how the librarian that
reccomended [sic] the books to me
also enjoyed the same types of
generes [sic] that I enjoy. Also, she
offered to send me more if I didn't
like the ones she sent me. “
22. “I think this is a great idea. I've never
heard of personalized reading lists. I
will be sure to use this feature in the
future for my children. Thank you “
“I am excited to have many selections
from which to choose. I never imaged
a service to aid me in the types of
books I love to read. Thank you, P. “
Notes added after to summarize what I talked about during each slide
When I saw the clever titles of the other presentations, I realized I should have been more creative. So I came up with 10 alternate titles.
Arapahoe Library District is not the first library to do this, nor are we necessarily doing it better than anyone else. I wanted to see what libraries of varying sizes and locations are doing. These are the ones who I talked to.
We created ours in Drupal; other libraries have also used their content management system or SurveyMonkey.
We spent some time talking about these pros and cons because it is definitely in the librarian’s best interest to have more detailed information about the reader’s likes and dislikes but the more detailed forms are daunting to patrons. They’re long, confusing, and oftentimes the reader has no idea what she liked about a particular book, just that she did like it.
Most larger libraries do have a dedicated shared area where staff can find other lists and use those for similar requests
This is where I went more to ALD’s experience. Audience was very interested in this. Afterwards, one person came up to me to write the teen top ones to bring back to her library. She’s also noticed huge decline in Supernatural and wanted this info as future “proof.”
Only 1/3 response rate. Other libraries who do or have collected stats shared similar response rates.
This was a teen comment. Most of the comments come from adults.
Other libraries said their ratios are probably very similar
I brought this up as a well-intentioned but useless question. I thought it would be helpful to the librarian to know whether teen is above average, average or below average reader. But like Lake Wobegon, all our “children are above average.”
