This week’s reference question is one of my own. I use Bloglines to read rss feeds, and a couple weeks ago they changed their interface.
I didn’t like the changes, so I used their Contact Form to express this and ask if there was an option to change it back. This was two weeks ago, and I still haven’t gotten a reply.
Then it occurred to me that perhaps Bloglines used Twitter, and maybe I could ask them that way. I found an @bloglines user, but even though he’s using the Bloglines logo, he indicates it’s not an official Bloglines account.
I asked him my question anyway (noticing he was fielding the exact same question a lot lately), and got a reply in 5 hours. And best of all, his suggestion worked perfectly, and now I’m back to using Bloglines happily, the way that suits me best.
But this experience got me thinking. It’s easy for organizations to let email messages slide, because only that one person knows they sent it in. But Twitter is public, and if someone is questioning or complaining, ignoring it won’t make it go away.
Unofficial or not, @bloglines did exactly what I would have expected an organization to do - respond quickly and helpfully.
This is what librarians do, and it reminded me of Kate’s post about their library suggestion box. I like that she’s publicly displaying suggestions and answers, because in this case, one-to-many communication seems better than one-to-one.
So I thought, why not encourage patrons to use Twitter as a suggestion box? Being public, the library has to address patrons’ concerns, but it also means all patrons can benefit from the answer, rather than just one.
I know a public forum isn’t appropriate for every issue, and anonymity can be necessary, so I think traditional suggestion boxes (whether physical or online form) are still useful. But I bet there are some libraries already doing this very thing. I know I came late to Twitter, but it really is turning out to be a very useful tool after all.
Bookseer is like many “what should I read next” websites, except it is impressively simple. Just type a title and author into their fun interface, and it gives reading suggestions based on Amazon.com and Librarything.com data.
Of course, the suggestions will only be as good as the data. But I like that it’s building on something already available, and automatically updated, rather than relying on manual edits. And it’s simple, free, creative, and doesn’t require an account.
Here are a couple reading suggestions website I came across recently that I liked:
The first is TheBookCalendar.com, which is simply a book-a-day online calendar. It shows the cover, a description (and sometimes author video), includes an Amazon link, and also has email and rss options. via lisnews.org
The second one might not be all that new, but I just learn about it a few weeks ago. ReadingTrails.com and provides a reading suggestions by linking related books into a chain.
Sound odd? I first heard of this form of readers advisory during an RA workshop in the SLIS program at Kent State University. The idea behind it is to identify one theme from the book that the reader likes, then find another book that contains the same theme. Next, pick something from that second book the reader likes and, based on that second criteria, link it to a third book that has that criteria, and on and on and on in a long chain of connected books.
An example: for someone who liked the magical aspect of the Narnia books, you might suggest they read Harry Potter. Then, since the Harry Potter series is based in England, you could link it to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.
Sort of like a six degrees of Kevin Bacon, but for books. It’s a neat idea, but tough to do mentally - which is why it’s a perfect task for a database. Or, in this case, “an innovative new social network for book lovers.” They say:
Reading Trails is a wonderful way to discover books to read, meet new people, and most importantly, to share your reading experiences with friends by creating trails. In particular, Reading Trails is a great tool for book clubs….
Because a book can appear on more than one trail, trails intersect. The result is a network of trails that can be browsed to find unexpected reading pleasures.
I checked out the site, and it seemed typical of new and innovative ideas - it’s a great idea, and I got some useful information from it, but the site doesn’t always work the way I expect.
It can be used without signing into an account, which is good. And you can search for books or themes, and from there scroll up and down the “reading trail” of that book to find other reading suggestions. Great.
Other good things:
Fairly easy to use, and the trails are visual and useful and pretty cool
Lets people write reviews of the books
Provides links to Amazon to buy the book and WorldCat to find the book at a library
Provides widget code to embed into your website, like this:
A few technical glitches I noticed:
On the search results page, each book had a little checkbox next to it, and I couldn’t figure out what that was for
Each book also had an odd little box under it, which only becomes useful when you are logged in (if it’s not useful, it shouldn’t be shown)
For the searches I ran, the bottom of the screen would say something like “Viewing 1-7 of 7 matches” and yet there would be twelve books displayed. None of the searches I performed displayed a number of books that matched what was listed on the bottom of the page
Some of the trail themes I searched for did not exist (Vietnam, Iraq, poverty, aliens) but most others did
There doesn’t seem to be a way to view details of any book - just see where it falls in various trails
They don’t seem to explain why books are linked in a chain - I’d be curious to see what theme connects them
Most of these cons are probably due to the newness of the website, and will likely be improved as the site grows.
I don’t think I’ll use these much on a personal level (unlike LibraryThing), but I will keep both in mind for readers advisory at the reference desk.
I know I said I wasn’t going to post anything this weekend, but I’ve heard a lot of talk about this and wanted to help disseminate:
Libraries get solicitations and purchase suggestions all the time. A few times a week I’ll get emails from authors or publishers, asking us to buy their books, or from patrons, asking us to buy a book they want to read or that would be a good addition to our collection.
But this week, I (and many other librarians, it turns out) got a cross-over: a message from someone apparently posing as a patron.
I am not providing links out of sheer irritation, and I won’t publish the person’s “name” for privacy reasons, but the email came from someone with the initials M.T., and the text of the message read:
Hi there -
I was searching in the library and trying to find the book [title] by [author], ISBN [isbn] and did not find it.
I heard about it on NPR, BBC America and saw it on Amazon and the author’s website at narcissism.ca.
Will you be getting a copy in soon?
With requests like this, I always check our catalog to see if the book is available from another library in my consortium, and I look up the patron to place them hold for it. But this time, I found neither the book nor anyone by this name in our system. But I did read about it on Amazon, so I replied:
Hello-
This does look like and interesting book, so I’d be happy to order it for our collection. I searched for your name in our catalog to place you on reserve for it when it arrives, but did not find a [patron name] listed.
If you can email back your library card number, I’ll be sure you are first on the list when the book arrives. Thanks for the suggestion, and take care.
Brian Herzog
Head of Reference
Chelmsford Public Library
I then got a message back saying “Hi Brian - I just moved. I’ll be down soon to get my card.”
That’s when I started seeing other libraries asking about this strange request. I wrote back saying that when they came to get a card, to come to the reference desk and I’ll order the book then. I haven’t heard anything back.
So, any library getting a similar request can probably safely ignore it, as it is a dishonest sales pitch. It sounds like most library book vendors don’t have it, anyway.
This week’s reference question is one of my own. I use Bloglines to read rss feeds, and a couple weeks ago they changed their interface.
