Time has passed quickly for this invitational! Here we are, half way through the 10 weeks, which felt a little daunting in the beginning!
NovelList Plus is the feature being explored this week. While I have managed to keep fairly up to date with NovelList Plus, and taken webinars offered by ebsco, I am, in good faith, completing the assignment for this week in its entirety. I am sure I can learn new things and refresh the old!
I watched the NovelList Plus tutorial featured on the Maine State Library page. I had forgotten that the difference between NovelList and NovelList Plus, is that the Plus includes non-fiction, where the NovelList is for fiction only. I am accustomed to using NovelList Plus exclusively.
Discovery Exercises:
1. I chose Debbie Macomber's Blossom Street Series. The view options enable the patron to see a 'detailed' view, which gives a brief summary. This is my personal favorite. The 'brief' view is condensed, yet allows the viewer to hover over the magnifying glass to see the details of the book. The 'brief' view is useful for printing a list of title for the patron who would like to keep track of the titles they have read, and what comes next. The 'grid' view might be useful for the patron who is very visual, and may remember the book cover but not the title. They may be able to pick out the ones they have already read, and know what title they would like next. I also find the Read-a-like Print list to be helpful. I can pass it to a patron so they can explore other authors.
2. I see that I jumped the gun on this question! I do love the way that NovelList Plus offers suggestions as I type a name in the search box . . . as my spelling may not always be accurate. As I type in David Bald . . . I quickly find his name in the suggestions list. It is always interesting to learn a bit about author writing styles, which is nicely displayed in the author Description section. As I mentioned above, the Read-a-Like Print list is a great way to quickly give patrons a list of similar authors to explore. Even better is showing them how to obtain the list on their own. For some patrons, it might be overwhelming, but for others it is very empowering and they love it!
3. Having patrons who enjoy the Amish stories, I searched using 'Amish' for my term. I limited my results to 'forthcoming' and 'adult'. I found a couple of titles I would enjoy reading, so I saved them to my folder for future reference.
4. I have viewed over 28 blogs from fellow participants. I have posted a couple of comments. That was a little tricky to do if they were not of the same blog site as I use. I chose to use Blogger, as I already have an email account with Gmail. It took me a bit to be able to post to a Word Press blog.
As this is only my 5th blog post ever, I am still on a huge learning curve. I appreciate this opportunity to start blogging, and look to the future in serving our patrons in the best way possible. I am looking for my blog posts to improve as I take part in this opportunity! Today, I added a label to my blog post. As time allows, I may go back and edit some of my previous posts.
Onward to week #6 . . .
Good for you taking the blogging plunge! I've been the voice of my library's info lit blog for a while now, and I'm still learning things about blogging.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of limiting to forthcoming. That's really a good way to focus, esp. for series we're already familiar with.