Crowdsourcing RA - special topics paper

 Crowdsourcing RA

            One of the first papers we read in our class was an interview of several librarians who engage in Reader’s Advisory (Tarulli and Wyatt, 2019). I wasn’t surprised at the importance of the personal interactions they discussed, but one comment stuck out to me. David Wright, a readers’ services librarian at Seattle Public Library exhorted us all to also use our tools (Tarulli and Wyatt, p. 3). As someone new to being a librarian, but not particularly new to reading and talking about books with friends, I wondered what those tools were. I soon learned about NoveList, which I used in our first set of prompts and in my book annotations. As I worked on more book annotations I realized that Goodreads would give me more information about books that NoveList suggested as read-alikes. The reviews by readers often gave me more insight into the book and helped me decide if it was one I wanted to list as a possible read-alike for my assignment. Using Goodreads in this way started me thinking about the crowdsourcing of reader’s advisory (RA). 

            Crowdsourcing is the process of using a large group of people who can be geographically dispersed to do a job or service, often for free (“Crowdsourcing,” 2024). It has been used in many ways because the internet has made this process easy and people seem to enjoy giving their opinions and feedback. Crowdsourcing is being used in the field of RA by web sites like Goodreads, LibraryThing, and Shelfari (Rapp, 2011). These sites use tags and predictive algorithms to help readers find their next book. Some might worry that this phenomenon could put librarians out of a job, but Stover (2009) suggests it these could be good sources for RA librarians.

            I decided to look at Goodreads for appeal factors and for read-alikes, and compare what I found there to what I found using NoveList. I found that there is a way to search Goodreads for appeal factors. To do this, go to "Browse>All Genres" and scroll to the bottom of that page and select "more genres" and you'll se a search bar that allows you to enter any text. If you choose standard appeal factor terms you will find books that people have shelved according to that term. It won't give you all books that have that appeal factor, but I was able to find books that also appear on the NoveList search for the same appeal factors. People do not always use the exact same terms because it's not regulated. I also found good ideas for read-alike using Goodread that were different from NoveList, but still had many similarities according to the NoveList site.

            In summary, Goodreads is definitely a good tool to use to help you find books for patrons, and you can look for read-alike or appeal factors and have success.

References

 

Crowdsourcing. (2024, February 26). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crowdsourcing&oldid=1204962342

Rapp D. (2011). Crowdsourcing RA. Library Journal,136(10), 56-57.

Stover, K. M. (2009). Stalking the wild appeal factor: Readers’ Advisory and social networking sites. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 48(3), 243–269.