ARRT Newsletter

What Librarians Need to Know about Publishing (and How to Find Out!)
Wednesday, March 25th, 2pm at LaGrange Public Library, 10 W. Cossitt Ave, LaGrange IL
Nora Rawlinson, former head of Collection Development for Baltimore County Library and former Editor-in-Chief of Publishers Weekly, will teach you what you need to know about publishing to predict popular demand. Creator of the web site, EarlyWord: The Publisher/Librarian Connection http://www.earlyword.com , Nora will also talk about how libraries can add more appeal to their own web sites with exciting book information and how to use internal blogs to better communicate with staff. For registration and more information, visit our web site at http://www.arrtreads.org

Saving Our Stories: A Readers’ Advisory Post Conference
Friday, May 8^th and Saturday, May 9^th, 2009
The Adult Reading Round Table is working with the Wisconsin Library Association, the Wisconsin Association of Public Libraries, and READ to present a post-conference to the WAPL conference. ARRT Steering Committee members Ted Balcom, Rebecca Vnuk, Roberta Johnson, Karen Kleckner, and Ricki Nordmeyer will present. The post-conference begins at 5pm on Friday with an evening buffet, a presentation by Barry Trott, and a Reading Trivia contest. Saturday offers a full day of presentations.
For registration and hotel information: http://www.wla.lib.wi.us/wapl/conferences/2009/registration_2009.pdf

An ARRT 25^th Anniversary promotion at the ALA Conference in July
An audiobooks program in the fall of 2009

Quarterly Literary Fiction Book Discussion
ARRT Steering Committee members Debbie Walsh and Ted Balcom are launching a new project – a Literary Fiction Book Discussion offered to ARRT members 4 times a year. The discussions will be held at various libraries (depending on which Steering Committee member is leading the discussion). The discussions will be held in the afternoon and will last approximately 1 ½ hours. The purpose of these discussions is as a learning experience and will develop members as critical readers and active discussion group participants. The first book discussion is scheduled for late April in Arlington Heights and the second discussion will be held in Geneva in July. If interested in participating, contact Ted Balcom at tbalcom@wowway.com or Debbie Walsh at dwalsh@geneva.lib.il.us

Nonfiction Leisure Reading Survey
Are you a nonfiction leisure reader? Have you taken the Adult Reading Round Table survey? If not, please go to www.arrtreads.org and look for the link on the left side of the home page. And, please promote the survey to your patrons by providing a link on your web site. We will be collecting data for one more year, so please help us gather information on nonfiction leisure reading tastes.

Book Discussion Collections
ARRT maintains a list of titles owned by libraries in multiple copies for the use of book discussions on the ARRT website http://www.arrt.org . If you have a book discussion collection at your library and have not provided the titles to the ARRT website, please consider sharing your collection so that other libraries may benefit. A list of multiple copies is available at http://www.arrtreads.org/multiplecopies.htm

If you have provided us with your multiple copies information and it has been a while since you've updated your Book Club Multiple Copies information with us, please send an update to mary.back@rmlib.org. Contact information for each library is available at http://www.arrtreads.org/contactinformation.htm

Contact Mary Constance Back for further assistance or questions at 847-259-6050 x136 or mary.back@rmlib.org. And, as always, thank you for your continued participation!

Romance Genre Study
All ARRT members are invited to join the current 2 year Genre Study (2009-2010) of the Romance Genre.

Participants are required to read at least one benchmark book from each subgenre plus another similar title taken from a list supplied. In each meeting the various characteristics, themes, appeal factors, and authors are discussed. At the end of the 2 year study, participants will be well versed in this popular genre of fiction.

The next meeting is April 2^nd and meets the first Thursday of every other month. Participants must be Adult Reading Round Table members.

For more information contact Debbie Walsh at Geneva Public Library (630) 232-0780 ext. 227 or dwalsh@geneva.lib.il.us

Common Problems, Uncommon Solutions
What should you do when a young patron, a sixth grader, for example, asks for materials, e.g. a Bertrice Small novel (very racy historical erotic romance) that you feel their parents might find inappropriate?

First, we congratulated ourselves for not wanting to censor a young reader’s reading. Then we thought an unobtrusive way of determining if this was a book our patron would really enjoy would be to ask, “Oh, yes, we do. How did you hear about this author?” It may be that she wants the book because she’s going through a pirate phase, or her family’s taking a holiday to Scotland. You might then take this opportunity to steer her to some titles that would be a more “age appropriate” way to meet her needs – pointing out where the S’s are shelved along the way, of course.

Sometimes the parent is with the child and wants confirmation about what they think. Code words like “mature” and “adult relationships and language” usually help the parent decide if this is a title their child is ready for.

Often, we have younger readers wanting books that may be too mature for them to appreciate not because of sex or violence, but because of the complexity of the book itself. The precocious 14-year old who announces she’s going to read James Joyce’s Ulysses over summer vacation should be congratulated for her ambition, but also cautioned that it’s a title that has turned many a liberal arts major away from English Lit. Telling the patron that this is a great book, but one that A LOT of people struggle with gives the reader permission to set it down, without feeling like they’ve failed.

Neal Wyatt: Nonfiction Readers’ Advisory
On July 9, 2008, ARRT had the privilege of hosting Neal Wyatt for a program called Nonfiction Readers’ Advisory: What We Need to Know to Help Our Readers. If you are working in a library and read the journals, you have inevitably seen Neal Wyatt’s name. She is is a very busy lady!

Neal is the author of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Nonfiction (ALA, 2007) and RUSA (Reference and User Services Association) President for the 2008-2009 terms. She is the editor of Reference & User Services Quarterly’s “The Alert Collector” column (http://www.rusq.org). She has served as chair of the RUSA Awards Committee, on the Booklist Advisory Board and on the ALA Editions Advisory Board. She is editor of Library Journal’s “Reader’s Shelf” column and of Library Journal’s Wyatt’s World. Neal is a Booklist reviewer and contributor to NoveList.

She started a new column called “RA Crossroads” on www.libraryjournal.com, a monthly column only available on the web where books, movies, music, and other media converge for whole-collection reader’s advisory experience. The column debuted in February 2008. Here is a link to her October RA Crossroads column: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6608102.html?q=RA+Crossroads

Neal’s Library Journal series called “Redefining RA”, launched in 2006, explores the transformations taking place in readers' advisory. Some topics explored in this series have been 2.0 for Readers, Reading Maps, RA Talk Online, and Keeping Up with Genres.

Neal presented a very informative program with lots of insights about narrative nonfiction books for pleasure reading. See the ARRT website www.arrtreads.org for a list of recommended nonfiction reading that audience members of this program submitted.

RA 2.0
This past October, ARRT hosted a very timely and informative program on how Web 2.0 technologies can enhance readers’ advisory services.

Sarah Statz Cords, coauthor The Real Story: A Guide to Nonfiction Reading Interests and Associate Editor for the Reader's Advisor Online, Monica Harris, the Young Adult Librarian at Oak Park Public Library, and Karen McBride, the Web Services Librarian at Des Plaines Public Library identified ways to use Web 2.0 technologies to connect readers to books, patrons to libraries, and library staff to each other.

Sarah was not able to attend the program in person, but she sent a podcast of herself! An example of technology enhancing even the workshop and program experience!!

Sarah talked about the value of blogs and reading suggestion forms as tools to reach out to readers. Library book and reading blogs can be extremely cost-effective and technologically inviting instruments of reader education and community spirit. Blogs are very easy to start and allow the entire library staff to contribute. Blogs give the library a "voice" and show patrons the level of staff expertise available.

Karen McBride compared blogs to wikis and offered common sense tips on when to choose one over the other. The second part of her presentation was about making videos for the library. No longer a difficult and expensive process, there are now many video editing and publishing resources are free or very low-cost to help create and publish a video. Broadcasting videos on sites like YouTube can greatly enhance the way a community thinks about its library, especially if the videos are fun, exciting and unusual.

Monica Harris talked about RSS Aggregators such as Bloglines and Google Reader, social bookmarking, and social networking. She introduced some studies on Internet Use, including Networked Families, Teens and Social Media, and Writing, Technology, and Teens, and The Pew Internet in American Life Project.

As an ARRT member, you can view and participate in the RA 2.0 wiki at http://arrt2point0.pbwiki.com/. The wiki provides links to useful resources mentioned in the presentations.

Common Problems, Uncommon Solutions
Question: Without reading all the books, how can you familiarize yourself with a number of heretofore unknown authors?
Answer: Ask co-workers what they’re reading. Who are their favorites? Read-alikes?
Read journals and pay special attention to promo budget and author tours.
Trusted patron recommendations.
Books with multiple reserves are ones RA staff should be familiar with.
Browsing carts of new books and recently returned titles.
The ARRT Genre Tool (The ARRT Popular Fiction List: A Self-Evaluative Biblliography for Readers Advisors).
Putting together bibliographies and displays provides a depth of knowledge in smaller areas.
Genre magazines like The Romance Reader (www.theromancereader.com )
How to Read a Book in 5 Minutes – which can be found at www.sjrlc.org/RAhandouts/5minutes.htm
“TIPS” from Brodart: www.brodart.com/books/colldev/tips.htm
Fiction_L: www.webrary.org/rs/FLmenu.html
Amazon.com www.amazon.com
NoveList http://search.epnet.com
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped catalog – includes comments on language, violence, and sexual content. www.loc.gov/nls/

Question: How do you determine how much time to devote to a readers’ advisory transaction? How do you determine when you’ve done enough?
Answer: This question is hard because it depends on that subjective “a-ha” moment, a look in the patron’s eyes that says “Yes, this is the book I’ve been waiting my whole life to read” (or something like that). Often your patron will give you cues like “Well, thank you” or “”I’ll just have a look at these.” But if you have a patron who honestly has no idea what she wants, or who appears determined not to be satisfied, we came up with some ideas:

Spring/Summer 2008

Genre Boot Camp Part 2: Shaping Up Those Genres!
An encore, but abbreviated, presentation of Genre Boot Camp proved to be just as successful as the original. 45 participants attended the Oak Park version of the Genre Boot Camp that was first presented in April, 2008. The top 4 genres chosen to be covered the second time around were Literary Fiction, Suspense, Science Fiction, and Women’s Fiction.

Ted Balcom, Roberta Johnson, and Rebecca Vnuk were some of the presenters of the top requested genres for the encore presentation.

Rebecca Vnuk is Library Journal Reviewer of the Year!!
Rebecca Vnuk, Chair of the ARRT Steering Committee, has been writing reviews for Library Journal since 2004 and has written about 75 reviews.

Prior to reviewing for Library Journal, Rebecca reviewed for VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates) from 1998 to 2002. She was one of the first people to read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Rebecca is also working on a book for Libraries Unlimited. Part of the Read On series, this edition will cover Women’s Fiction. Women’s Fiction, being the least genre-like of all the genres, can be hard to classify. So, this book will be invaluable! Some of the subgenres that will be included in the book are Chick Lit, Issue-Driven, Bridal Lit, Mommy Lit, and Workplace Lit

She recently sent off the 1^st draft of the manuscript. The publication date has not yet been set.

Rebecca is now reading Of Men and Their Mothers a novel by Mameve Medwed and Civil and Strange, a novel by Cláir Ní Aonghusa.

Newsletter Editors
Barbara Kruser, Niles Public Library
Stacey Cisneros, Batavia Public Library

ARRT Works is published three times a year: Winter, Spring/Summer, and Fall.