Readers' Advisory and Social Media
When it comes to helping a patron find a new book to read,
librarians think in professional readers’ advisory terms. However, library patrons do not think in
terms of readers’ advisory, they just want to know whether or not a book is
good. The internet has opened up a whole
new world of book discussion and amateur reader’s advisory. Leading the charge into this new world are (free) social media sites like Goodreads, Shelfari, and LibraryThing, which are the
three most popular. Now, we could sit
around and whine about how these sites are making librarian guided readers’
advisory obsolete or we could embrace these sites as new opportunities to
connect with our patrons. As Neal Wyatt,
readers’ adviser librarian and writer for Library
Journal, points out how the Internet “expands the RA discussion and
connects the collection and readers to each other in original, flexible, and
idiosyncratic ways…it makes greater use of librarian expertise…offering another
way to interact and offer suggestions” (Wyatt).
The idea
behind all of these sites is they are a place for readers to connect with other
readers. The sites pretty much like any other social media site, like Facebook or Google+, but for book lovers. They are places for book lovers to give their opinions and connect with people who love the same books that they do. These sites were made by book lovers for book lovers.
While being essentially the same, each of these sites brings something unique to the table. LibraryThing allows
readers to tag specific topics that the book is about. It also has a Zeitgeist page which is
statistics and lists of the top rated books, the top tags, least favored
authors, among many other things.
Goodreads allows users to make lists of books that they consider the
best or the worst and it offers a lot of social activities, like book
clubs. Shelfari allows “APIs for blogs
and other websites as well as the import and export of book lists” (Stover).
One of the
cool and unique things that LibraryThing has to offer is LibraryThing for
Libraries. It allows the tags used on
LibraryThing to be integrated into a library’s catalog. It also allows patrons to look up a book in the
catalog and then it is gives the patron a list of similar books. The patrons can also rate and review books
directly in the catalog.
By taking
an active role in using these sites, librarians are making connections that they
could never have before. The sites are
allowing librarians to “reach new and different patrons” and to improve “their
own knowledge of books read, heard of, and glanced at, and it is all in one
place” (Stover). Creating accounts on
any of these sites is a good way to show how knowledge the staff at the library
is. The more that the staff posts, the
more that patrons will see that the staff cares about offering good suggestions
of books to the patrons. It also gives
patrons who are too shy to ask for suggestions in person an opportunity to ask
their questions online. By using these sites for readers' advisory also shows how adaptable libraries can be in this new technology age.
These sites
can also be used to help benefit those patrons who do not have computers or
accounts. Librarians can create genre
lists and read-a-like lists for popular series and titles that can be made into
fliers to be distributed to patrons. Seeing what GoodRead, LibraryThing, and Shelfari have to offer, might encourage more patrons to create an account.
Another
perk of these user generated sites is that the information is extremely up to
date. The books that people are reading
are always changing. It is not like a
list that someone creates and then does not update. New books are always being added. They are also a good place for librarians to
see what their patrons are reading.
There could be books that the library does not have, but are popular
with the patrons on Goodreads or LibraryThing.
Librarians
are also rubbing off on their patrons by using these social media sites. Kate Stover, head of Readers’ Services at the
Kansas City (Missouri) Public Library, points out how “these bibliosocial
networking sites are getting the vocabulary of appeal out there to readers…it would
appear through osmosis, [they] are picking up the lingo of readers’ advisors
and using it in their own descriptors of what they are reading” (Stover). It is just another way that libraries are
helping people learn something new. It
also makes it easier for librarians to ask patrons questions about what kinds
of books they are looking for.
There are some
risks to getting advice from online reviews alone, especially since it has
recently come to light that reviews on sites like Amazon.com could be false,
hired out by authors in order to make their books look good. You do not know whether or not the reviews
are real. Bing Liu, a data-mining expert
at the University of Illinois, Chicago, estimates “that about one-third of all
consumer reviews on the Internet are fake.
Yet it is impossible to tell when reviews were written by the marketers
or retailers, by customers or by a hired third-party service” (Streitfeld). But with these sites, it is a network that
was created by regular people. Amanda
Close, runner of a digital marketplace development for Random House, pointed
out “because Goodreads is not a publisher or retailer, people feel that the
information is not getting manipulated…People trust them because they are so
crowd-sourced and their members are fanatics.
You can’t buy a five-star review there” (Kaufman).
Just
because more and more people are turning to sites like Goodreads and
LibraryThing for readers’ advisory, does not mean that librarians have to start
freaking out. Like pretty much all
aspects of the library, readers’ advisory has changed over the years. Librarians just need to adapt and find ways
to connect with their patrons on these sites.
Readers’ advisory is not going anywhere, it just looks a little
different. These sites provide an opportunity to connect to patrons that might
not have the courage to ask their question face to face. The websites hold new opportunities for
readers’ advisory. It is also teaching
patrons a little more about readers’ advisory.
It is important to remember that just because a patron finds a book to
read on these sites, does not mean they will never use the library again. They will have to come to library to check
out the book!
Sources
Kaufman, Leslie.
(2013, February 12). Read any
good web sites lately? Book lovers talk online. The New
York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/books/goodreadscomis-growing-as-a-popular-book-site.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&partner=rss&emc=rss
Sheehan, Kate. (2007). LibraryThing for libraries. Library
Journal (1976) Net Connect Supplement,
3.
Stover, Katie Mediatore.
(2009). Stalking the wild appeal
factors: Readers’ advisory and social networking
sites. Reference & User Services Quarterly 48(3), 243-246.
Streitfeld, David.
(2012, August 25). The best book
reviews money can buy. The New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-ademand-for-online-raves.html?pagewanted=all
Trott, Barry and Yesha Naik.
(2012). Finding good reads on
Goodreads. Reference & User Services
Quarterly, 51(4), 319-323.
Wyatt, Neal.
(2007). 2.0 for readers. Library
Journal (1976), 132(1), 30-33.
