Episode 905: Adult Readers Advisory Services

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Welcome to Season Nine of Linking Our Libraries! We are so happy to have you join us again! We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and our members are all types of libraries and their staff.

This season we are focusing on topics that are important to library support staff. We will be discussing each of the ten competency sets in the American Library Association’s Library Support Staff Certification program. Some of these may overlap with our Library Basics series from Season Seven, but this season we will be looking specifically at the material the ALA has identified as important. We will link to the ALA’s program, if you want more information or want to sign up for one of their classes.

Earlier this season we talked about the three required courses in this certification program. This week we are talking about one of the competencies that is optional: Readers Advisory.  We feel very qualified to discuss this, as we have been recording an RA podcast for years now: Reading With Libraries. Subscribe today!

In recent years, Readers’ Advisory Services have expanded from assisting library users with identifying books to read, to assisting users with identifying materials for viewing and listening. These services consist of recommending titles of potential interest to the user to match the user’s interests and experience as well as promoting the collection. 

Let’s take a look at each of the 12 different components the ALA has identified as important here, and talk about a little information on each one.

  1. Library Support Staff need to know the library’s collection and where to locate materials by type and genre. It is not enough to just wave your hands at the books and vaguely say “Well, they are over there somewhere.” All library staff need to have at least a basic knowledge of the collection, and know where that material is located.
  2. Everyone in the library should have a general familiarity with popular and classic fiction, including a knowledge of authors, various fiction genres, and popular current nonfiction. And of course, this is subjective. If you are in a public library, then knowing about the New York Times best sellers, and some of the books that are popular is fine. If you are in a school library, then you need to know what books are interesting to kids. Know your community, and the things that might be interesting to them.
  3. All staff should know and use basic reference and review tools for classic and popular music. This might not be your strongest area, and that’s fine – you don’t need to be an expert. But music is so prevalent in the digital world and so accessible to anyone, that you need to have a few tools ready to help people find the type and genre they like. Ideally your library would have a database or two, or bookmark a few music sites so you are ready to look up whatever your patrons need to know.
  4. Staffers in all libraries should know and use basic reference and review tools for film genres. Again: being an expert is not required. But at least knowing that you can go to something like IMDB or other web resources to find information about both new and classic movies will help your patrons to find things they will enjoy.
  5. Library staff should all know formats and resources appropriate for persons with disabilities affecting vision, hearing, or understanding. This is probably something that most libraries are not doing well. But if your library has these tools, be sure you understand how to use them. And if your library is not accessible to everyone in your community, see what you can do to start improving this area of service. Everyone matters, so everyone should be able to use the library.
  6. Staff should all be trained in using online and print readers’ advisory tools and reviewing sources including current and emerging social media sites and techniques. It is easier than ever to find good book suggestions online, so get familiar with a few that you feel comfortable using. Your library may use Novelist, but there are potentially better, and cheaper, tools any library can use.
  7. Any staffer who works with patrons should be able to briefly and succinctly describe the plot of a book, film, or other media and its appeal. You do not need to have this skill for every media type out there; but if you have read a book, or seen a movie, or even just heard a lot about it – you should be able to tell patrons why it’s popular and let them decide whether it’s right for them.
  8. A key part of all of these skills is that library staff can make recommendations without judgment regarding reading, listening, or viewing preference. Saying dismissive things like “I don’t listen to that kind of music” or “I don’t really like to read books” may be accurate, but it’s not helpful or useful for the patrons. Recommendations are not about you and your interests; they are to help serve the community members, so stay focused on them.
  9. Library staff can respond to inquiries from, communicate with, and assist users with finding specific titles in their preferred format whether print, media, e-books, online or other available formats. This is an important idea, and again: it’s completely inappropriate to insert commentary on your own preferences. Content is always what matters with media – not the format, and we are fortunate to be here at a time with lots of choices. So help your patrons to explore all their options!
  10. Library staff can assist in developing, promoting, and implementing programs based on the library collections, such as book discussions, summer reading programs, film, and media programs and cooperating with community groups as appropriate. THis may not be a thing that all staff do, if you are in a library large enough to have support staff who work behind the scenes. But joining in with setting up interesting and fun programming is a great part of the things libraries do!
  11. Staff can assist in compiling resource lists and displays of books, recordings, films, websites and emerging media by genre, historical period, subject, author, composer, or director. We all have some good stuff in our collections, and figuring out how to connect it to other people is a key part of our responsibilities. IT is not enough to have things – we are here to share them.
  12. An important task library staff can do is to suggest additions to the collection based on trends in materials requested and borrowed. Staff who interact regularly with patrons, or who are reading reviews and keeping up with popular media should be able to suggest materials that would help your library to have a better collection, and better resources to serve your community.

Do you feel like you have a quick understanding of these components? There is, of course, a lot more to learn. We can all spend our careers working on enhancing these skills! Use the CMLE podcast resources as a place to start, and if you want to sign up for the ALA/APA classes to get more information, we link to them in our show notes. 

Books Read

Now, let’s get to the part of every episode that we love: sharing a book we are reading. We will link to these books on our shownotes pages, and the link will take you to Amazon. You probably know this, but when you click one of our links and then buy anything at all from Amazon, they give us a small percentage of their profits. That support really helps us, and although it’s anonymous so we won’t know it was you – we appreciate you taking the time to help us!

Conclusion

This was a quick overview. Stay with us all season to get an overview of all ten of the ALA/APA’s certification topics for library staffers. And if you want to find out more about getting certified yourself, check the website (linked in our show notes), or just email us at admin@cmle.org.

Thanks for spending time with us today. It is always great to have this time to chat with you about libraries and the skills we need to be successful. Come back next week, because we have more information to share about libraries! This is just the beginning, and there are so many other great things to share!