LJ Series "Redefining RA": 2.0 for Readers

Imagine facing a readerwho asks for book suggestions based on the newest cutting-edge slipstream novel by an author you have never heard of. You don't even know if your library owns the title, but you gamely look it up in the catalog...only to discover that not only do you own it, but your sf/fantasy expert has entered some read-alike suggestions and provided a brief comment on the major appeals of the genre. In addition, patrons have tagged the book with a range of descriptors, submitted their own reader reviews and reading suggestions, and given the book five stars. Suddenly, you know a great deal more about this book and can not only make some better informed suggestions but can also invite the patron to join in the dialog by submitting comments, reviews, and ratings. This day is not far away in the future of readers' advisory (RA) services.

The world of RA is embracing many of the tools that collectively are referred to as Library 2.0. Surprised? Don't be. After all, RA has long shared many of the beliefs supported by Library 2.0—well before there even was such a thing—including conversations with readers, valuing and empowering the experience of the reader, and near constant reevaluation of RA services.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the rebirth and adaptation of the annotation—a tool to help librarians remember books in an RA context. For years RA librarians have either kept some type of annotation on books they have read or felt guilty that they have not. Now, with online tools and upgrades to library catalogs, many RA librarians are ditching the guilt in favor of a new method of creating annotations—and are discovering an increasingly collaborative RA community as they enable a new wave of user-created content.

Annotations are notes taken about both the content and the substance of a title—kept in notebooks, on index cards, as word processing documents, or in a database or spreadsheet. These full-fledged RA documents record author, title, number of pages, geographic setting, time period, subject headings, series notes, appeal elements, plot summary, a brief descriptive sentence suitable for use on a book list, similar authors, and lists of read-alikes and read-arounds. It can take an hour or more to craft a complete annotation, which explains why so few RA librarians fully annotate every title they read. In practice, annotations have evolved from this exhaustive recap to variations that include much less detailed notes or even a simple list of books read.

Currently, this old-school annotation is undergoing a transformation, thanks to the tools and applications of Library 2.0. As Michael Casey and Laura Savastinuk define it, a Library 2.0 service is one “that successfully reaches users, is evaluated frequently, and makes use of customer input” (see “Library 2.0: Service for the Next-Generation Library,” LJ 9/1/06, p. 40–42). The entire point of RA is to reach readers. The very act of RA, suggesting titles, getting feedback on those suggestions, and using that feedback—in conversation with the reader—to adapt, retool, and refine additional suggestions is a highly evolved process of frequent, if not constant, evaluation and use of reader input.

Library 2.0 applied to RA means that our core service—fostering connections and discussions about items in our collections—can be enhanced and adapted by social technology. Library 2.0 tools play to the strengths of RA work and can deepen and broaden the interaction, introduce new ways of connecting books to other items, and enable librarians to enlist the entire community of readers in the collaborative creation of RA services for everyone. This is happening most quickly through a revisioning of what annotations are, where they exist, and who creates and uses them.

Annotations are becoming easier to keep, increasingly adaptable, and more usable. No longer consigned to personal, private notebooks, spreadsheets, or index cards, 2.0 annotations exist on publicly accessible library catalogs, blogs, and book cataloging/collecting web sites such as LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Shelfari. They encompass features like comments, tags (individualized subject headings or title descriptors), reviews, and rating systems, and they incorporate reader- and librarian-created book lists, wish lists, and to-be-read lists.

While traditional annotations had to re-create the catalog information of a book, the 2.0 annotation does not. Technology lets us marry the annotation to the metadata—either because it is included in (or linked to) the catalog record or is kept in an application that includes the book's bibliographic description, if not more as well. Services such as Content Café and Syndetic Solutions integrate jacket images, tables of contents, summaries, and reviews into the catalog, and skilled catalogers contribute subjects, settings, series, series characters, and genres. The catalog is further adopting Library 2.0 features as we enable reader-contributed comments, grades, stars, reviews, and tags. This rich suite of features allows RA librarians to annotate titles quickly with immensely usable content focused on just the essential RA elements of a reading experience.

This overlaying of the annotation inside the already hyperenhanced catalog contributes pieces of added RA value—added value that over time will far exceed what readers have been taught to expect by such book sites as Amazon.com. Armed with such tools and possibilities, driven by a bedrock commitment to the reader and the reader experience, and supported by colleagues who enable the technology, RA librarians can not only have exchanges with readers but also can invite, even enable, readers to talk with one another. We can share our expertise at the same time we let readers collaboratively share theirs and, in so doing, extend the RA conversation and make it accessible and useful for both staff and other patrons.

Michigan's Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) is out front in this transformation. There, patrons are encouraged to rate books, tag titles, jot notes on old-fashioned catalog card images, and write reviews. The catalog card images can be gathered into a personal file—able to adapt to multiple uses such as a wish list, a have-read list, or a project-specific resource list. The cards can be emailed with a note, so readers can share titles with others. Although it has not been promoted beyond a single blog post at launch, use is high. Eli Neiburger, IT manager for AADL, reports that 6700 individual cards have been saved to personal card catalogs to date and roughly 4000 notes made so far on the cards throughout the catalog at a rate of about 200 comments per month. That high level of reader involvement strongly indicates that readers want, and will take advantage of, similar opportunities to interact.

Another pioneer, Hennepin County Library (HCL), MN, forges new RA and Library 2.0 ground with its innovative BookSpace page. There, lists created by librarians meet with lists by patrons to make a deep resource even deeper. Inspired by Amazon.com's Listmania, these lists let users suggest books to fellow readers and allow staff to compile their own suggestions for public use. HCL also invites patrons to comment on books. Both opportunities to interact have been enthusiastically embraced by readers: 270 lists were contributed in the first six months of BookSpace's launch, and the library averages about 600 comments per month on items in the catalog.

The intersection of RA and Library 2.0 just keeps growing. The Danbury Library, CT, has added content from LibraryThing into its catalog so that patrons can see the collective tag cloud and similar books drawn from the contributions of LibraryThing users. Elsewhere, public libraries in Ohio have collaborated to offer online RA service that works just like virtual reference. Library system vendors are also introducing products such as Innovative Interfaces' Encore, easily enabling Annotation 2.0 features such as tagging, comments, and reviews.

RA and Library 2.0 are such a natural fit that the convergence will only continue. As David Wright, a librarian at Seattle Public Library, puts it, “For readers' advisors, it is so much more satisfying to have give and take, to be a forum of discussion, to value others' reading experiences, rather than just assuming the unwilling role of taste-makers and book mavens.”

Librarians who have RA-enabled catalogs use the features to collect and study the comments, tags, and reviews patrons submit—a rich source of data for RA work. Jody Wurl, senior web services librarian for HCL, has noticed that readers “tend to comment more often on books they love and refrain from commenting on books that were so-so.” Tracking these responses lets her see what is popular at her library—gauging reader involvement with the collection on a micro, title by title, level.

Wurl's colleague Kim Battern, librarian–adult services, uses the comments to make title suggestions. They lead her to books she wants to read, she brings up titles with comments in her RA conversations, and she looks to the reader-created lists to see what her community is interested in at any given moment. Jackie Sasaki, access and user services librarian at AADL, tracks reader involvement by following the hold activity of books she writes about on the library's blog. For example, when she posted a piece on Nicole Mones's The Last Chinese Chef, the holds queue jumped from one to 15 in five days. She also adds tags to titles and watches their circulation. Since she tagged Carrie Brown's Lamb in Love, which she did while working on a list called “Love Chooses You,” the book has stayed in near constant circulation.

Many readers' advisors who work in libraries that have not yet enabled such features (and even those who do) have turned to book catalog sites such as LibraryThing, Shelfari, and Goodreads for help. The first thing that attracted Boston Public Library children's librarian Ann Langone to LibraryThing was the ability to keep tags. For many librarians, this single feature is enough to motivate them to write annotations of titles they read. Tags take little time to input, and they can be both job specific (such as Biography of 100 pages or less) and more RA-inclined (such as quick read, strong sense of place, or quirky). Langone also tags books with descriptors that her patrons use when requesting specific books, such as books about manners, chapter books, second grade books, books with Spanish words, or books about TV characters. This way she can create multiple points of access to the same title based on a range of user vocabulary: her own, her patrons', and—because sites such as LibraryThing unite a community of readers—the vocabulary of other users as well.

This collaboration links readers. Neil Hollands, an RA specialist at Williamsburg Regional Library, VA, says that although he does not keep a book cataloging account, he still uses the sites in his work. “I particularly find the tags useful in collecting books that are appropriate to particular displays or to generate ideas when I'm working on RA service for patrons whose favorite genre, books, or authors are not familiar to me,” he says.

The adaptations and applications keep coming. David Lane, librarian–adult services for HCL, keeps his LibraryThing account minimized on his desktop so that when he is working with readers it is easily at hand. He tags titles with words that patrons often ask for, such as “Guy Read,” and he uses the rating system to keep his current favorites at the top of his screen so he can quickly find suggestions.

Holly M. Anderton, manager of teen services for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Main Library, puts all the new teen books into LibraryThing and adds catalog links and tags. She also offers a feed of the new books on the library's blogspot page and passes out a handout that tells teens how to use the RSS feed from LibraryThing to have lists of new titles sent to their email accounts.

Abby Blachly, LibraryThing's librarian, relates how one librarian keeps a running list of all the titles her readers have talked about or asked about during a shift, so the next person taking the floor can see what's been the buzz so far that day. Michele McGraw, senior librarian, Eden Prairie Library, HCL, uses her LibraryThing account to keep track of books, prompt her memory, and develop a reading plan. “Keeping track of what I read is essential for readers' advisory,” she says. “I read a lot, and need a way to keep track. LibraryThing includes cover art, which helps when the title of a book isn't enough. I also set some benchmarks for myself each year to make sure I'm reading at least a few titles in areas I don't read in regularly; keeping the list helps me find those gaps.”

Many librarians, such as Megan McArdle, director of collection development for Chicago Public Library, use other book cataloging sites. McArdle tried all sorts of annotation methods until the online site Goodreads clicked for her. She often writes annotations in Goodreads and mines that data for the staff picks section of her library's web site. Cindy Orr, recently retired collection manager for Cleveland Public Library, uses the reading list feature of Shelfari to monitor titles she wants to read and the “my shelf” feature to maintain a running list of titles she has read. She annotates her to-be-read list with short notes on why she wants to read them. For example, Dick Francis's Under Orders is annotated with “first book written with his son,” and she noted that Amy Bloom's Away is “getting positive reviews everywhere.”

As the ultimate goal of RA service is to create, maintain, and increase all types of conversations about library material, incorporating readers' interactions into library catalogs and web sites pushes RA a giant step forward. Suddenly, we can help readers help one another, engage with RA services more deeply, and thus increase the serendipity of RA.

This approach and tool set expands the RA discussion and connects the collection and readers to each other in original, flexible, and idiosyncratic ways. It allows for reader-to-reader conversations sparked by interest, whimsy, and personal knowledge. It makes greater use of librarian expertise as well, offering another way to interact and offer suggestions. This larger and more fluid virtual conversation is in turn amplified by the sociability of the tools that support it, and the result is an ongoing discourse that continually grows and adapts.

AADL is well on the way. While still in what Neiburger calls the “infrastructure and process stage,” he hopes the library will “get to a point where the contributions of our patrons are as much of a draw for our web site as the contributions of our staff,” he says. “Staff then can help to promote the best stuff coming out of the patron community, tipping [the] reader to exceptionally vibrant threads or really great reviews or lists, placing the staff both as organizers and participants in conversations about content that a public library is uniquely positioned to host.”

Like AADL, Hennepin also understands reader interaction and the collaborative possibilities between readers and staff. Sharon Hilts McGlinn, senior web services librarian for HCL, looked to invite reader feedback with BookSpace. “We wanted to create opportunities for readers to contribute content (comments in the catalog, book lists, comments on blog posts, photos) and to interact with staff,” she says. The goal, she adds, is to “pool our staff expertise with our customers' reading experiences and knowledge to create a more useful and engaging site.”

Beyond the cool factor of the tools and the ability to widen the exchange, the new experimentation in annotations really allows librarians the freedom and space to think out loud and in partnership with the reader. RA is not a neat process with promises of perfectly matched titles. It is a dialog with a language that is constantly changing, based on the title, the reader, and the needs of the moment.

Having space to play around with the language our readers use when talking about books helps us figure things out. Having the tools to try new ways of capturing, expressing, and sharing the essential RA content of a book advances RA in multiple directions. These tools help create a new Rosetta Stone, allowing us to listen and think, track and practice, all in a space that is open and welcome to experimentation. Roberta Johnson, creator of Fiction-L, says of the electronic discussion list that it was started in 1995 to be “a reporting tool for those librarians embracing the new world.” That new world has arrived, and Annotations 2.0 are a key building block.