Book Clubs Made Easy

Are you tired of hunting down a dozen copies of the same book for your book club?  Tired of typing up discussion questions and author information?  Did you know that you and your patrons can check out a Book Club Kit to make running a book club really easy!?  Book Club Kits are sets of 12 copies (including one large print copy when available) of the same book that can be checked out as a unit.  Each kit includes a Reading Guide that provides information about the author, discussion questions, read-alikes and tips to start and run a successful book club.

There are currently 26 kits available with more being added in 2013.  

Running a successful book club requires a good leader; someone to help choose the right book, to keep people on topic and to keep the discussion moving.  There are a number of resources available in print and online to help.  

Resources for Book Clubs Available From the Chinook Arch Library System:

Title	Author	Format	Call #
The Reading Group Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Start Your Own Book Club.	Jacobsen, Rachel W	Book	374.22 J
The Book Club Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to the Reading Group experience	Diana Loevy	Book	374.22 L
What to Read: The Essential Guide for Reading Group Members and Other Book Lovers	Pearlman, Mickey	Book	015.73 P
A Year of Reading A Month-by-month Guide to Classics and Crowd-pleasers for You and your Book Group By	Ellington, Elisabeth	Book	011.73 E
Good Books Lately The One-stop Resource for Book Groups and Other Greedy Readers By	Moore, Ellen	Book	374.22 M

Online resources for Book Clubs:

Book Clubs Canada http://www.bookclubs.ca/

Book Browse http://www.bookbrowse.com/bookclubs/

Reading Group Guides http://readinggroupguides.com

Book Reporter http://www.bookreporter.com/

Reading group Choices http://www.readinggroupchoices.com/

Also, most major publishers include book discussion guides for their titles on their website.

(book club resource list developed by Heather Nicholson, Coaldale Public Library)

I hope these resources help you lead engaging discussions of some of the best books.

Fueling the Library EBook Fire

If you haven’t yet heard, the big news in eBooks this month is Hachette’s OverDrive price increase, which was announced on Thursday, September 13. In an email to their library customers, OverDrive stated that, “Hatchette will be raising its eBook prices on October 1, 2012 on their currently available eBook catalog (~3,500 eBook titles with release dates of April 2010 and earlier.) On average prices will increase 220%.” However, OverDrive corrected itself in a later blog post, saying the price increase would only be about “104 percent, or 2.04 times the current price.”

Although following RandomHouse’s decision to increase OverDrive eBook prices by 300% in March, Hachette’s decision seems to have come during at bit of a backlash. In a post at the beginning of August, noted library blogger and tech-geek, Librarian in Black publicly stated her decision, as director of San Rafeal Public Library, to “break up” with library eBook. Earlier this summer in an article on American Libraries’ site, director of Douglas County (Colo.) Libraries, Jamie LaRue, did the math on purchasing “50 Shades of Grey” as either an eBook or a physical book. He argued that due to cost “publisher and distributors (in this case, Random House and OverDrive) have driven up the price of an ebook so far that it really doesn’t make sense for libraries to buy it.” Staying a bit more positive, Andy Woodworth sagely remarked on his blog that “[i]f this is how [publishers] plan on nurturing and growing the eBook market, then we (libraries, consumers, readers) are in for a bumpy and vastly uncomfortable ride.” If nothing else, this latest development has definitely given libraries cause for pause over the value of eBooks.

However, new and innovative solutions are also emerging out of this eBook budget squeeze. LaRue and his library colleagues in Colorado are forging a new way with their e-content delivery platform, which was described detailed in in this year’s Jan/Feb edition of Public Libraries. Working groups for digital content, like Library Renewal, Gluejar, and Open Library are going strong. Furthermore, ALA seems to be spurring its Digital Content and Libraries Working Group into more action with this latest development (see response). With all this fuel being added to the fire, the world of library eBooks likely to be an more exciting, if not innovative one, in the near future!

Transformers, Wizards, and Literacy - Oh My!

My brother and I were recently chatting about public libraries offering video games. My dear sibling, who works in the business of selling video games, is not too happy.  He promptly informed me that the Transformers: Fall of Cybertron game ranks in at a whopping $59.99 (buy new). Yikes.  With a public library possibly offering this game as a checkout where will his business go?  Well, that’s another can of worms for another day. What I do find cool is the idea of a patron walking into the library for a game that will challenge their reading AND problem solving skills.

Video games have an interesting reputation.  On the one hand, they can have an addictive quality and can be distracting for users. On the other hand, they can be powerful and underestimated tools for boosting various capacities of literacy.  This could include text, visual, digital, and information literacy.

The amount of text in video games can be substantial and often pieces of information and knowledge are rewards for completing certain tasks (what happened to the days of receiving a gracious “Thank You” from Princess Peach?).  Moreover, the information provided in the game, whether small amounts of text or glimpses inside a game encyclopedia, often must be used in strategy.  This is an interesting consideration.  Video games can provide ample reading opportunities – just maybe not the leisurely kind.  The information being provided must be read, digested, and then used for decisions in a real-time environment of changing circumstances (see this 3 part article). 

Here at Chinook Arch, we've recently started signing out Gaming Kits to our libraries.  This will help facilitate programming that involves video games.  So far, they've been quite popular.

An article from Online Education Database brings you 100 tips and resources for incorporating video games at the library.  Here are a few tips that I like:

1. Recruiting volunteers: Some community members might be well versed in video games and can possibly help gaming newcomers navigate the rules and hardware. They might also be willing to lend games and promote the program outside of the library.

2. Promote other library events:  While you have some keen patrons in your space, use a gaming program as an excellent opportunity to promote other library events and information.

3. Be visible: If gamers recognize your friendly face from previous events they may be more inclined to ask you and your staff for assistance in the library.

4.  Ask for input:  When trying to build a video game collection or create more video game programs ask this specific group of users for suggestions and ideas.

5. Creating a great gaming environment: You can (oh so smartly) place popular titles of books, movies, and magazines in the surrounding area.  On a quick break, players might browse the materials nearest to them and find something they like but would not have necessarily searched for (kind of like hiding vegetables in a casserole, no?).

In any case, a library checkout or not, the learning value of video games has won over many a librarian’s heart.  

Readers Advisory for LDS books

A few weeks ago, my teenaged neighbor and I were chatting about books. She had seen me reading on my deck and wanted to know what kind of books I liked to read. I told her that mostly I read bestsellers and general fiction, but this summer had been reading murder mysteries (something about the sunshine drives me to read dark books).  I asked her what she likes to read and she said anything good and juicy, and she prefers LDS books and asked for recommendations.  Confession time – the only LDS books that I know of are the Tennis Shoe books, and I wasn't even sure what they were about. I knew that we had LDS books in Chinook Arch so I first recommended that she try a subject search for LDS – fiction (narrowed to YA) in bibliocommons.  But, this is an area that I am seriously lacking in, so I promised to do some research and see what I could find for her. Below are some sources that I found for  Adult and YA LDS books.

Provo Public Library

A Google search led me to the Provo library which has quite a few resources for LDS readers . They keep book lists for both Adult LDS fiction, and YA LDS fiction on their library thing site. These lists seemed comprehensive and were a good place for me to start. Their blog also has quite a few recommendations for LDS readers.

Whitney Awards

The Whitneys are an award program for novels written by LDS authors. The prizes are awarded for Best Novel of the Year, Best Novel by a New Author, Best General Fiction, Best Historical, Best Romance, Best Mystery/Suspense, Best Youth Fiction- General, Best Youth Fiction – Speculative. The have the finalists and winners listed back to 2007 on their website.

LDS Publishers

The LDS Publisher website boasts “books for LDS readers. Tips for LDS writers”.  This site could be good resource for aspiring LDS writers in your community. It’s also full of LDS book reviews.

Deseret Books

Deseret is largest LDS book publisher and seller. Check out the new releases to see what’s up and coming from them. Or sort by Teen + Fiction and sort by popularity to find popular YA LDS books.

Did you find these links useful? Do you have other resources that I didn't touch on? Please share in the comments!