Adult Reading Round Table
Newsletter

      ARRTWorks      
Fall 2009

Librarians and Publishers Unite!
Norah Rawlinson, creator of EarlyWord: the Publisher/Librarian Connection website, shared her knowledge and insight on what librarians need to know about the publishing world in order to predict popular demand. Norah is the former Head of Collection Development for Baltimore County Library and former Editor-in-Chief of Publishers Weekly. EarlyWord is now a fundamental advisory resource and a must-include on any reputable website list for Readers’ Advisory. Norah presented us with a Galley Challenge. She passed out ARCs of a number of books and asked the participants to review them. She created a wiki which can be found on the ARRT web site http://www.arrtreads.org. She would then introduce the wiki to the publishers so they may see some advance reviews from advisory librarians. A number of books have been reviewed and commented on. Norah (and we) are hoping that is a beginning of a dialogue between the publishers and the Adult Reading Round Table (and all our collected wisdom)!

Common Problems, Uncommon Solutions

Our Director does not support Readers’ Advisory Work. What should you do?

Responses from group:

• We have never had this problem
• Our Director is on the ARRT Steering Committee
• We are a small library and do reference and readers’ advisory at the same desk
• Though our reference staff does not consider RA’s service to be important, our statistics prove otherwise
• Offer training sessions with legitimate questions RA staff encounters
• Break down circulation statistics and present them to the Director
• Send the literature on RA’s importance and growth to the Director

• The entire group acknowledged the need and desire for help from other staff
• Our library’s atmosphere is warm
• Corrections depend on whom your co-worker is
• One might say “that is one way to go but here is another suggestion” or “you might consider this direction…”
• Take patron’s name and call them back with further suggestions
• Wait until patron has left the area of the interview …you might “snag” patron on the way out of the building and mention “I just thought of something else…”
• Tact and diplomacy are the keys for a successful solution to this dilemma

• If a person enjoys reading certain titles, he/she should not be encouraged to change unless he/she has exhausted the particular genre
• If the librarian knows the patron, she might ask what he/she enjoys about a particular genre and perhaps then suggest a title or two. We all agreed this takes time, tact, and perhaps knowing the patron
• If there is not time, the patron could be called at another time to complete a full interview

• Be open, friendly, and approachable at the RA desk
• Build a common ground with patrons
• Offer promotional literature with displays, bookmarks, pathfinders, web pages
• Demonstrate RA tools such as NoveList and allow patron to explore on her/his own
• Signage such as “I am at the desk for your questions”
• Use Fiction-L

Have You Listened to a Good Book Lately?
The fall 2009 ARRT program was All about Audiobooks. Amy Peterson and Susan Gibberman of Schaumburg Township District Library presented an informative and enlightening overview of audiobook readers’ advisory and why we need to offer it at libraries. They presented some very interesting statistical analysis of audiobook usage (from 2008 Audiobook Market Study). Amy and Susan showed some reasons why some don’t want audiobooks - and divided the results into what we as libraries cannot control and what we can impact (I never looked at it that way, before)! They shared some Advisory tools and tips. Essentially, we can use the same core questions we use in the Fiction Advisory interview: “what audiobook have you listened to recently that you enjoyed” and “what type of audiobook do you generally like to listen to?” Sound familiar – just substitute “audiobook” for “book” and “listen” for “read”!

Readers, Writers, Books, and Blogs
ARRT Steering Committee members Rebecca Vnuk and Karen Kleckner dazzled the audience at the recent ILA conference with their presentation about blogs and websites every Readers’ Advisor should know about. Their presentation was polished, seamless, and thoroughly entertaining! Both Rebecca and Karen had librarians coming up to them for the following 2 days telling them how wonderful their program was! If you ever have an opportunity to see this program – don’t miss it! Hopefully, Rebecca and Karen will be asked for a repeat performance! And, one of the blogs featured in the program was Karen and Rebecca’s new blog called Shelf Renewal! Check it out at http://www.shelfrenewal.com

Steering Committee Kudos!
What some members have been up to!

Rebecca Vnuk, the current ARRT Steering Committee Chair, has written 2 Reader’s Advisory titles for Libraries Unlimited/Greenwood Press: Read On…Women’s Fiction and Women’s Fiction Authors: a Research Guide.  Rebecca writes reviews and articles for Library Journal and was named Fiction Reviewer of the Year in 2008. Rebecca created a blog on women’s fiction at http://womensfic.blogspot.com. She also is co-creator of a new blog at http://www.shelfrenewal.com (see above article). Her recent article on women’s fiction for Readers’ Advisor News (Libraries Unlimited e-newsletter) can be found at http://lu.com/ranews/sep2009/vnuk.cfm. Rebecca will be presenting at the upcoming PLA Conference in Portland, Oregon in March, 2010.

Karen Kleckner reviews fiction for Library Journal and was named one of their 2009 “Movers & Shakers.” She is co-creator of a new blog at http://www.shelfrenewal.com (see above article).

A very recent development with Karen and Rebecca’s Shelf Renewal blog is that is was bought by Library Journal!! Congratulations, ladies. It can be found at www.libraryjournal.com/shelfrenewal?

But, you can still check in on Rebecca and Karen at www.shelfrenewal.com to see what they are doing in libraryland.

Annabelle Mortensen wrote an article for the current issue of Mystery Scene Magazine (Fall 2009) on Rex Stout entitled "The Genius of West 34th Street: 75 Years of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe."

Becky Spratford created a blog called RA for All http://www.raforall.blogspot.com  Becky was accepted into the Horror Writers Association. Becky works with Joyce Saricks on a blog at http://www.ra763.wordpress.com/ together with their Dominican University MLS students.  

Ted Balcom contributes to a Booklist blog called Book Group Buzz.  It can be found at www.booklistonline.com and then clicking on the Book Group Buzz icon.  It is one of several reading-related blogs available on the Booklist web site. You can also find Joyce Saricks' column called “At Leisure” on this site.

Jo Bonnell and Linda Knorr with the Readers’ Services staff at Des Plaines Library write a blog called “Positively Elllinwood Street”, a blog for readers, watchers and listeners. It can be found at http://positivelyestreet.blogspot.com/

Debbie Walsh provides instruction and guidance to a group of Massachusetts librarians on how we do genre study in Illinois. She encourages them to consider setting up genre study projects in their home libraries, or planning and to implement larger genre studies with neighboring libraries. This is done through a grant awarded to the Massachusetts librarians from the Massachusetts Library Governors (the MA version of the State Library). Debbie also will be teaching the College of DuPage LTA Readers' Advisory course in the spring of 2010.

Merle Jacob wrote an article on Mysteries with a Foreign Accent for NoveList. She has also written a chapter about the Reader Responsive Mystery Collection in an upcoming Greenwood Press book edited by Mary K. Chelton.
 

      ARRTWorks       
Winter 2009

Upcoming Adult Reading Round Table Programs

What Librarians Need to Know about Publishing (and How to Find Out!)
Wednesday, March 25th, 2 pm 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

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.


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

ARRTWorks is published three times a year:
Winter, Spring/Summer, and Fall