LJ Series "Redefining RA": Take the RA Talk Online
In person and via web tools, readers'advisory is all about how well we talk to patrons
By Neal Wyatt -- Library Journal, 2/15/2008
Right now people are talking about books—in coffee shops, at school basketball practices, and in beauty salons. One reader notices another and a conversation begins. Fun, eager, trip-over-each-other-sharing conversations that range from books to movies to music. We do the same thing. As a group, readers' advisory (RA) librarians are a chatty bunch when it comes to what we are reading. We share on blogs, we gush about novels in the staff room, we suggest titles to each other for displays and book groups, and we keep our friends and family well supplied with suggestions. The adoption of online RA conversation forms is helping to extend these opportunities even further and offers a fascinating testing ground for RA work. It turns out that offering RA online gives us more time to think about suggestions, allows us to collaborate better with our colleagues, and gives us space to grapple with what we need to learn in order to engage with our patrons.
Take it online
One of the first libraries to offer RA service online was the Williamsburg Regional Library system in Virginia. It created a form that parallels actual RA conversations. As Williamsburg's director of adult services Barry Trott says, it was designed to “guide the reader through thinking about his/her reading.” Many other efforts offer various types of RA e-conversations. They range from Ohio's Read This Now statewide chat service, which launched in 2004 and pulled in 963 RA questions in 2007, to Seattle Public Library's (SPL) new Personalized Reading Lists, and more.
These experimenters are creating a brave new world of service. Online RA differs from face-to-face conversation primarily because its asynchronous approach precludes the immediate feedback and response upon which advisors rely. “[It's] not the same as being able to respond to a person's body language, facial expressions, and even some hesitance he or she might express when I hand over a book,” says SPL fiction librarian Hannah Jo Parker.
Regardless of this downside, the librarians working with online forms find they offer both advisors and patrons a rich and meaningful opportunity: they attract readers who might otherwise never ask for assistance. Many patrons simply do not have the time or inclination to come to the library and ask for help, and others are reluctant to have an open dialog about their tastes. Online forms “can be a very safe place to be truthful about your likes and dislikes,” notes SPL fiction librarian Linda Johns.
Forms also allow advisors the time to make more thoughtful suggestions. In person, RA conversations have built-in time constraints, and the pressure advisors often feel to provide an answer means that we can fall back on our standbys or what we are reading at the moment.
“Sometimes I think that RA in that hurried face-to-face [manner] ends up being more a matter of suggesting what you can remember rather than making the best suggestions,” Trott says. Many libraries using forms make it clear that responses will take a few days to compile. That time frame lets advisors collaborate, use various RA tools more carefully, and think beyond the well-worn suggestion. “Without the pressure of someone standing there,” says Trott, “the advisor is at liberty to make more thoughtful choices.”
These forms also supply a training opportunity. Creating the form and then using the results to make suggestions help advisors figure out just what information matters when working with readers. There is little as instructive to a new readers' advisor than sitting down with a form that was poorly filled out and struggling to make a suggestion. The moment when one says, “If only I knew this, I could find some books,” is the moment that all the theory about appeal becomes concrete. This training extends to patrons as well, as the questions on these forms help prompt readers' thinking. It provides them, as Trott says, with a “vocabulary to use in discussing their reading that most readers don't automatically have.“
Other benefits include the ability to collect and analyze RA statistics that can help guide and shape future plans for RA departments as well as provide concrete evidence of the value of the service to the community. The data allows staff to identify high-interest authors and topics so that booklists and displays can be more on target and can also inform collection development departments, offering a unique view into the use of the collection.
Online RA service also helps departments collaborate more fully, mining the collective wisdom and knowledge of the entire staff and involving everyone in the RA process. Perhaps the biggest benefit is the promotion of RA services themselves. How many patrons have wandered our collective stacks but have never been approached and offered assistance? Offering online RA forces an active and robust engagement with readers.
The downside to online forms is the time it takes to supply thoughtful responses. We risk that the volume of requests will overtake the hours available to fill them. The debate about whether or not that staff time is worth the effort is ongoing. There is no question that the time taken to craft a response is time not spent doing other RA activities, including serving patrons in person. On the other hand, the general agreement that form-based RA provides wider service, excellent training, and more thoughtful suggestions is an extremely compelling argument for considering their adoption.
What's ahead?
The move online opens up a world of possibilities for librarians. Once we get used to online conversations, we can begin to explore the seemingly endless technological advances that can help us connect to readers. (See “2.0 for Readers,” LJ 11/1/07, p. 30, for more on online innovations.) Right now patrons can set up our catalogs to alert them when a new book is added that matches a favorite author or subject. One day we will be able to alert them when a new book, DVD, or MP3 comes in that matches their appeal profile. As we push forward the boundaries of RA, that day of almost instant Twitter-like service seems to be on the horizon—shaped as RA always is, by the expert contextual conversations we have everyday with our patrons.
| Author Information |
| Neal Wyatt compiles LJ's online feature Wyatt's World, edits/writes LJ's The Reader's Shelf column, and is the author of The Readers' Advisory Guide to Nonfiction (ALA Editions, 2007). She is a collection development and readers' advisory librarian from Virginia |
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