Read Something New
If you’ve ever finished a book and thought, “Wow, I’d like to read another book like this” or “I’ve read all this author’s books, but I want more,” if you’ve ever come into the library and been overwhelmed by the incredible number of unread books, if you’ve ever wished you could find a novel about a specific subject, the library has a couple of resources to help you.
The first is a database called Novelist. Novelist is a website that you can access with your library card from home or at the library. It has reading advice, author profiles and bibliographies and reading lists. I think it is fun to explore through the website, following various links. Whenever I start playing with Novelist, I come away with a huge number of new reading possibilities.
To get started, go to the library’s homepage, and point at the purple FIND ANSWERS tab across the top. When you point at this tab, a menu will drop down; you should click RESEARCH DATABASES. When the new page loads, you click where you are: IN LIBRARY or HOME. You’ll then get a list of categories. The library offers many different home-accessible products, for our purposes today, choose LITERARY SOURCES. You’ll get a list of the resources we offer with their descriptions. Click NOVELIST. At home, you may have to type in your library card number or your zip code. You’ll get a screen telling you what to do next. Once you do that, you’re in! It sounds like a lot of work, but, trust me, it’s worth it if you’d like help figuring out what to read next.
Now, you should be in Novelist. Give us a call (937-878-9383 option 3) if you are having problems.
The very first thing you should notice is the search bar. You can just go ahead and get started using it if you like. Try typing in the name of a book you enjoyed or an author you like (last name first) Anything that is written in underlined blue letters is a link. Why don’t you just start clicking away? I typed in one of my favorite books, I, Claudius, and a couple of screens later I found out that it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1934. I was able to browse the list of other winners, and I saw quite a few books that I’ve already read and enjoyed (The Prestige by Christopher Priest (which won in 1995,) The Road (won in 2006,) Saturday (won in 2005)) so I might pick a few more to request and read.
I’m not going to spend too much time describing what is available, since it can be fun to discover some things on your own. I will tell you, though, that on the right hand side of the home page is a link to a nice tour of the site that you can watch. Here’s a link to a QuickStart Guide, also. Remember, you can click absolutely any link (blue underlined font) and explore some more.
Novelist is particularly nice if you are reading a series and you want to know what the next book (or the first book) is. To get a list of a series of books in order, type in the title of one of the books. Let’s say you read The Cat Who Played Brahms. If you type in that title, you’ll see in the record that shows up, SERIES, VOLUME: The Cat Who mysteries, 5. Go ahead and click The Cat Who mysteries (because it is blue and underlined), and voila! a list of all the Cat Who mysteries, in order, many with descriptions of their plots! How neat is that? You can print out the list and keep track of the ones you’ve read. You can use the list to look up the next ones you need in the library catalog and place requests on them. It is just so incredibly convenient!
Tags: books, databases, reader's advisory