I received an email from Jennifer Ohzourk, the new Senior Subject Specialist at St. Louis Public Library's Center for the Reader. She encouraged me to share the information and an invitation for any who might be interested in attending their upcoming program.
- On Wednesday, September 23rd at 9:00 a.m.,
Kaite Stover will be presenting Care and Feeding of Book Groups: Maintaining, Sustaining and Rejuvenating. At this session, learn a little history of the book group, how to make
good book selections, how to formulate discussion topics (especially
when none can be found online), good internet resources for book group
leaders, and how to handle difficult book group members. Share ideas for
making a book discussion special, titles that were a hit, and titles
that were not. Come prepared to talk about
your book club experiences and get ideas for creating new ones.
- Kaite Stover is the Director of Readers’ Services
for the Kansas City Public Library. She is the co-editor of The
Readers’ Advisory Handbook (2010) with Jessica E. Moyer, and currently
writes the "He Reads, She Reads" column for
Booklist with David Wright and "Under the Radar" for
Public Libraries with Jessica E. Moyer. Additionally, she is a regular blogger for
Booklist's "Book Group Buzz" blog.
- The program will be held from 9:00 am – 11:00 am in the Central Library’s Auditorium. Registration is required for the event.
The St. Louis Public Library calendar link is http://www.slpl.org/events/calendar.asp or those interested in attending can call the Center for the Reader at: (314) 539-0376.
Jennifer OhzourkSenior Subject SpecialistSaint Louis Public LibraryCentral Library | Center for the Reader1301 Olive Street, St. Louis, MO 63103eMail: johzourk@slpl.org
On Thursday, October 9th, during the 2014 Missouri Library Association (MLA) Conference, Kaite Stover (Kansas City Public Library) gave a great program called: Readers' Advisory for a New Age of Readers. The Powerpoint presentation and handout for her program can be accessed online at: http://kaitestover.pbworks.com Click on Conference Presentations, then Missouri Library Association for 2014.
During her program, Kaite mentioned an upcoming training which will be provided by RUSA-CODES (Reference and User Services Association-Collection Development and Evaluation Section of the American Library Association). The training will be email based and will begin Tuesday morning, Oct 14 and run through Wednesday afternoon/evening, Oct 15th. This CODES conversation is free and open to any library staff with an interest in readers' advisory.
RA as a Technical Service
A new CODES Conversation begins October 14th and will run through the 15th.
RA does not just happen in the stacks and at the public service desk. It happens in the catalog, in collection development, and in materials processing. Join a community of over 500 librarians interested in all things RA as we discuss how to make sure that the RA service that happens behind the scenes of public service gets the attention and focus necessary to make all of RA as robust and useful as possible.
Some of the topics we will address include:
- How best to calculate, and what factors to consider in setting, holds ratios?
- Genre Headings: How (if at all) do catalogers/patrons/advisors agree to what constitutes a genre? How many headings do we want/need in an age of genre blends?
- What features of the catalog support and enrich RA?
- How can the collection development staff help the public services staff keep up with new titles and genres?
- What use are stickers on books? How do they work with genre blends?
- Should we interfile or have divided collections?
- How do we ensure the best access to paperbacks? And speaking of paperbacks has the format flipped to some degree to ebooks?
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CODES Conversations are focused electronic conversations on current issues facing collection development and readers’ advisory librarians—or anyone interested in those areas. The free, moderated discussions are open to all - just subscribe to the discussion at http://lists.ala.org/sympa/subscribe/codes-convos, then follow and contribute (or lurk!) as you wish.
