Week 1 Assignment 3

I feel Reader Advisory is like swimming, you can read about it as much as you want, you will never really know it till you do it. However, the twelve RA golden rules are a good framework to start.

The first three rules (read, write and prepare) are common sense. More you read, write and prepare, easier it will be. A broad knowledge about books and DVDs is a good start, but the art of RA is the way to apply this expertise in specific situations.

Rule 10 (keep current) and rule 12 (pass it on) also concern training. RA is a never ending skill, and one has to keep learning about new trends. And there is no better and easier way than exchanging with colleagues. We all have our specialties and tastes, why not sharing them. Like Lincoln would say, one can have all the answers some of the time, and some of the answers all the time, but one cannot have all the answers all the time. A whole team of librarians might, though.

Rule 5 and 6 (don’t pigeonhole the readers and the books) are the most important to me. Everybody is different, and will react differently to the same book. Books, like people, cannot be reduced to a single category. The best thing about books is to be surprised, to discover an excellent book when you only open it “to see”.

I put rule 4 (attitude) and rule 11 (enjoy yourself) together. I always try to the customer at ease, not to be too serious or to have definitive answers. I want to make the customer try new books and AV’s, not to impose them on her or him.

Finally, rules 7 (it’s not personal), 8 (no perfect answer), 9 (invite back the customer) show how RA is not a science. It’s not because I love a book than a specific customer will like it as well. It’s not about my taste, but the books themselves. The only way to find out if a customer likes something is to give it a try. If s/he likes it, good, if not, stop reading, bring it back to the library and try something else.