My secret shopper experience was kind of a bust. Even though I ended up leaving with a book I had in mind, I later discovered a lot of other books that I might have liked better when I went on NovelistPlus for myself. I visited a large library where nobody knew me and was helped by two young (under 30?) employees.
In Tarulli and Wyatt's Listening to Advisors: A Conversation About Readers' Advisory Services, Practice, and Practicing, Catherine Sheldrick Ross noted three specific training gaps that can lead to a lack of genre knowledge or just drawing a complete blank:
- “The ability to find out, specifically, what kinds of books the user would enjoy (i.e., the RA interview)
- Insufficient familiarity with the range of genres that interests readers
- Insufficient use of professional readers’ advisory tools and a tendency instead to rely on personal knowledge (p.4)”
Reference
Tarulli, L., &
Wyatt, N. (2019). Listening to advisors: A conversation about readers’ advisory
services, practice, and practicing. Reference & User Services
Quarterly, 59(1), 2–6. [Library & Information Science Source]
The more experienced employees at my library tend to get moved away from the circulation desks to work on things like cataloging or planning programs. This leaves patrons to ask their RA questions with the part-time staff, which consists mostly of high school students and recent graduates. They mostly received training on the mechanics of checking books in and out, placing holds, etc.
ReplyDeleteI imagine this happens in a lot of libraries. I'm surprised your experience happened in a large library though, as I would have expected that situation to be more common among small libraries with limited staff.
Hey! We were both once under-30 employees once as well. I have had library experiences that I would consider a bust though too with all ages of information professionals. This time, I had a librarian that was so excited to share her recommendations with me that she gave me about 15 of them. She just kept going and going. Good use of the readings for this assignment!
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to hear that you had a bad experience. I can say that even just hearing the type of Sci-Fi that you wanted that Ready Player One would have never crossed my mind. I am shocked that they did not use a reader's advisory tool at all.
ReplyDeleteSorry you had a bust experience! I wonder if asking for a "well written" book tripped them up! To me a well written book has an almost poetic flow in words and in storyline (I actually switched my sci-fi pick since we last spoke for something more thoughtful and poetic in it's writing), but these employees seemed to confuse "well written" with "critically successful/popular." Maybe it was an off day!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I'm pretty sure I have disappointed some patrons with recommendations in the 5 years I've been working at my library. Before this program I never really knew what RA tools were out there and no one at my library told me of any. At least not any that helps as much as NoveList. I really only had google and Goodreads to help me. And up until about a year ago, there was only one person working at the library that had any type of library science background. I really like that you included the three gaps in training that can be seen in libraries and I definitely think that is true for the library that I'm working at. Now there are two of us that are in a MLIS program though so it is getting better. Hopefully with some practice the two libraries workers that helped you will get better with giving recommendations!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry it wasn't a good experience. I feel like I probably did that in my early days when I relied heavily on Google and book reviews. My director introduced me to NoveList some time ago but it's only been during this class that I've really been exploring it deeper. I know I would have froze at the "well-written" part and I'm going to do a search for that when I get to work tomorrow and see what it brings up.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry your reader's advisory was a bust. I have been in the same place when I was first starting out in the library world. I only used Novelist a little later in my library experience until I discovered it. But, it is sad that both of them could not come up with a sci-fi read.
ReplyDeleteGreat summary and discussion!
ReplyDelete