National Year of Reading: quick update

I've added a new tab to our Web Catalogue for the National Year of Reading.

At the moment there are two pages:

• NYR: a list of National Year of Reading resources and reading list links based on the Ultimate Book Guide
• Themes: reading list links based on the monthly themes

Read all about it

Here's one where I ask you for help:

I'm putting together some National Year of Reading-themed reading lists for the Web Catalogue. The "Read all about it" theme obviously suggests print journalism so that's what I'm going along with. I can find lots of non-fiction but I'm struggling with fiction: I want to include books with journalists as the main protagonists or with a press setting. Aside from "Scoop," which we have in reserve stock, all I could think of were some of the works of Edgar Wallace and E.Phillips Oppenheimer (betraying my vintage) which we don't have at all. (If you have to ask who they are you're too young to know). Oh, and Superman because Clark Kent's a reporter.

Any ideas?

Spread The Word!

Spread The Word — the organisation set up by The Bookseller's Association to encourage a love of reading — has set up a web site called Books To Talk About, which does what it says on the tin. Amongst the features on the site are competions and a discussion forum.

You'll also find links to the web site for this year's World Book Day on March 6th. This site will be listing events and activities for World Book Day but you don't have to wait until then to have a look at the games and links.

We've added links to titles from the Books To Talk About list on our Web Catalogue. Borrowers registered with Rochdale Library Service can reserve any of these titles by clicking on the "Request item" button and it won't cost you a penny. All you need is the barcode from your library card and your PIN number (if you don't have a PIN, or can't remember it, you can ask a member of staff to set one up for you next time you're in the library).

Literary awards

This is a bit of mischief on my part but I couldn't resist it: I've added the shortlist for the Literary Review's Bad Sex In Fiction award to the Reading Links pages of our Web Catalogue.

I'm not sure how much should be read into the fact that we've got all the titles on the shortlist and the previous five winners. Probably best not to think about it!

Web Catalogue: Winning Reads

Readers Recommend

I've just updated the "Readers Recommend" page of our Web Catalogue to include a few titles that were nominated in some informal feedback sessions a couple of months ago, plus a couple of recent entries in this blog.

There are a few lists on this page:

• The "Readers Recommend" list is pretty much what it says on the tin.
• "Readers' Group Choice" are titles nominated by reading groups in our libraries. We're about due another canvass to update these. The Home Library Readers' Circle is a group of customers of our Doorstep Library Service which delivers books to housebound people; Sharon encourages them to share opinions and suggestions (you'll see a few of them in this blog).
• "A change of format" is just a selection of alternative format versions of "Readers Recommend" titles. Some are in large print, some are in audio versions of one sort or another. the original aim of this was to make sure that we had something listed for people who can't use — or don't want — the "normal book" version of a title. I'm havering a bit on this and wonder if it might not be better to just incorporate them in the main list, same as I have with the Richard & Judy Summer Reads. I'm open to feedback on this.
• "Readers' Polls" is made up of the results of various national polls I've bumped into at one time or another. I thought it might be interesting to see how similar or different these may be to local results.

I hope this is useful. If you have any ideas/comments I'd be pleased to hear them!

— Steven

Authors of the Month

We've just updated the "Authors of the Month" feature on our Web Catalogue. This is a list of the authors featured in some of our libraries, click on any entry in the list and you'll see which of their books with got in our libraries. If you then click on any particular title you'll see which libraries have copies and whether or not any are available.

If you're a member of our libraries and have your barcode and PIN to hand you can reserve a copy to be picked up at your nearest convenient library. This is a free service to our customers. If you don't have a PIN, next time you call into the library please ask for one to be set up for you.

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Not all of our libraries run "Author of the Month" features. Some prefer to run features celebrating particular genres or subject areas. Others prefer to run features that cut across genres and collections, including both fiction and non-fiction. These last can be particularly difficult to turn into searches that can be build into the Catalogue, the Love Stories list in "Themed Reads" being one of the few examples we've done so far. (As its name suggests, it's also the easiest!) Every so often we'll include one of these wider-ranging features in this blog.