Here are some exercises that library staff have created to keep your readers advisory skills up to date. These exercises aim to reinforce the readers advisory training staff members have already undertaken.
Creating book reviews
A training exercise we do for staff at the Inverell Library is monthly book reviews based on a particular genre/theme. The main purpose of this exercise is to introduce library staff to genres they are not familiar with in the hopes they will get an idea of the appeal characteristics of that genre to aid with readers advisory.
At the start of the year I will decide on the genre or theme of books we will review. I try and pick something we haven’t done previously and something that will offer diverse reviews without being too intimidating for staff.
Previous genres/themes have been: • First book in a series • ABIA Award winners (either in General Fiction of Literary Fiction) • Books set in another country • Biographies
I allocate a month for each staff member so there is a total of 12 reviews. Some staff may have to do 2 reviews. Staff can select their own book to review, preferably a book in our collection (either digital or print) so patrons can borrow them item if they are interested in it. They are encouraged, but not forced to read their book. If they choose not to read it, they are asked to research the book to see what other readers enjoy/didn’t enjoy about it and find out what makes it appealing.
Book reviews are due by the start of their allocated month, so I can put the reviews in our monthly newsletter. This year I have started putting their reviews on our LMS so patrons are able to see them online. When I first started this training exercise the reviews tended to be more of a summary of the book with very little context on what makes it appealing or not. Now I remind staff that book reviews should be written so it demonstrates what makes the book appealing and refer to Nancy Pearl’s ‘Four Doors To Reading’ (Story/Character/Setting/Language) which they can use as an aid should they have trouble writing their review.
This exercise has helped library staff improve their knowledge about what makes certain genres/themes appealing for readers which can assist them with the basic readers advisory skills. Deciding what book they will review requires staff to either search the catalogue, look amongst the shelves or research online, which means they are engaging in readers advisory skills to make an appropriate selection for a specific genre/theme.
Matching game
Matching books to customers’ requests This game was created to get library staff members in the routine of identifying appeal characteristics from a book’s blurb/summary and matching them to a customer’s request.
The set-up
• You need to create or use previously recorded customer readers advisory questions. Write/type them out on separate pieces of paper. At least 1 request for each team but its better with more so you can play more rounds (you want each team to do several rounds).
• Select some books (teams could also be assigned a shelf of books each) or create/print book covers with the blurbs on the back. I used 36 book covers for a game with 6 staff members who were split into 3 teams, so each team had 36 books to look through and each team answered 3 customer requests then switched with another team.
How the game is played The game consists of several customer requests and staff must suggest 5ish books for each request. Start by splitting staff members into teams of 2 or 3 so they need to discuss their process with each other. Then hand out a customer’s request to each team and a stack to books or printed book covers. You want to give each team at least 20 books to select from for each customer request. Remember that when staff do a real RA request they mostly use the catalogue to search for appeal characteristics and can bring up hundreds of results so 20+ isn’t that many.
The staff members need to read the customer request, identify the appeal characteristics the customer is asking for. Then go through the books and read the blurbs to discover the appeal characteristics of the books, then match them to the request. As I said before this game is all about identifying the appeal characteristics and matching them to the customer’s request. It might be helpful for staff members to write down the appeal characteristics that they identify from the customer’s request.
There are no wrong answers to this game, just trying your best to match books to customers requests. And like with a real RA conversation you can add a book that doesn’t completely match the request but that the customer might be interested in.
There are also no real winners with this game, although I did award each teams members that finished first a chocolate frog, and at the end gave everyone a frog too. It’s supposed to be a fun game that helps staff learn to put the appeal characteristics in practice.