FYI Linda H. Lord Director, Library Development Maine State Library 64 State House Station Augusta, ME 04333 Telephone 207-287-5620 Fax 207-287-5624 E-mail [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: Lynne Rohweder [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 10:34 AM To: Alabama ListServ (E-mail); Diana Degen (E-mail); Harris County Public Library (E-mail); Jennifer Watson (E-mail); NC Live (E-mail); North of Boston Library Exchange (E-mail); Philip McArdle (E-mail); Stephen Cunetto (E-mail); Susan Brown (E-mail); Teresa Pare (E-mail); Linda Lord (E-mail) Subject: NoveList Notes (Sept 2002): Mainstream Fiction Please post to your respective listservs. Thanks! LynneRohweder Director of Marketing - NoveList NoveList is a product of EBSCO Publishing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- NoveList Notes September, 2002 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- Please share by forwarding to any other colleagues who would benefit from this content. NoveList Notes is an eclectic collection of tips, tricks, or information about how to use NoveList more effectively. They are designed to be short, quick, and practical. Some topics will be more applicable to libraries, some more applicable to schools, and some will be effective for either environment. This note appeared couple of years ago and due to its popularity, has been rewritten for the current version of NoveList. ========================================= MAINSTREAM FICTION: "Memoirs of a Geisha" ========================================= While at the desk, a reader comes up and says, "I loved "Memoirs of a Geisha!" Can you help me find something just like it?" You feel your heartbeat quicken as you realize that this is a book you haven't read! ====================== MAINSTREAM FICTION ====================== Working with a reader who has read a book that you have not read is always challenging. When the reader's title is a mainstream fiction title, the pressure goes up. The reason for this is that mainstream fiction doesn't have a formula plot line. Many of us are comfortable with genres and their conventions. Mainstream fiction also has conventions; these books tend to have a character focus. Rather than being organized around a plot formula, mainstream fiction is organized around the life-stories or life-events of the novel's characters. The characters, their relationships, and their struggles become factors we can search on to guide readers to similar titles. Many mainstream fiction readers are also interested in the quality of the writing. ================= USING NOVELIST ================= To help your "Memoirs of a Geisha" patron most effectively, you should find out what her experience of the book was. Use a variation of Joyce Saricks' question "Tell me about a book you have read and enjoyed?" and ask the patron, "Can you tell me what you enjoyed about reading "Memoirs of a Geisha?" After the patron has finished telling you her version of "Memoirs of a Geisha," you can use NoveList to guide her to other titles that might be of interest. Many readers of this book talk about liking the fact that this book contained stories about women living in other countries, stories about women and the issues they face, stories about women who were ethnically different from the reader, and/or stories about women that were well written. In working with this reader, we would use the following steps: Start NoveList. 1. Click on the START button at the "Welcome to NoveList" page. 2. Select the link for "Find a favorite title" at the New Search page. 3. Enter "memoirs of a geisha" and click on the SEARCH button. Select the link for the title to go to the title record. 4. On the title record for the book, click on the "Find Similar Books" button. 5. The "Find Similar Books" page displays all the subject headings from the title record (in our example, "Memoirs of a Geisha") as editable checkboxes. This allows the reader the chance to view the subject headings and select the ones that are most interesting to her. - A reader interested in novels about women and their experiences might select one or more of the following headings: women; friendship; men/women relations; or competition in women. - A reader who enjoyed the novel's Japanese setting and wanted more books that take place in Japan and explore the country's culture might select: Kyota,Japan and social life and customs; or geishas. - Readers who enjoyed following the main character's struggle from humble beginnings to a place of wealth might select "rags-to-riches stories." 6. After the reader selects the headings that are of interest to them, click SEARCH to retrieve titles that have a list one of the selected headings (NoveList's relevancy ranking in the results list tell you how strong your match is). Note: At "Find Similar Books," NoveList now allows the reader to indicate whether the subject heading is a required or desired subject heading for the search. Here is what that means: Required: Checking this box for a subject heading means that the search will only display titles that contain this subject heading. If you check more than one subject heading in the Required column, only those titles that contain all of the "required" subject headings will be retrieved. (This acts as a Boolean AND.) Desired: Checking this box means that all the titles containing at least one of the "desired" subject headings will be retrieved. (This acts as a Boolean OR.) You discover that one of the things your reader really enjoyed about "Memoirs of a Geisha" is the vivid description of social life and customs but she does not care whether it is about Japan or some other country. Therefore, "Social Life and customs" would be checked in the "Required" column. The reader thinks it would be nice if it was also about "Women" and "Friendship" but these subject headings are not required for her (they are "nice to haves"). These subjects could be checked in the "Desired" column. NoveList will ONLY retrieve titles that have "social life and customs" as a subject heading BUT if the title also has "women" or "friendship" as subject headings, those titles will appear at the top of the relevancy ranked list. ======================================= ANOTHER APPROACH FOR THE SAME TITLE ======================================= If the reader is focused on the quality of writing, you can use NoveList's Best Fiction section, which contains over 200 awards lists. 1. Click the "New Search" button at the top of the page to return to the Search Selection page. 2. Select the "Best Fiction" link in the Browse Lists section of the page. 3. Make sure that "Adult" is selected as the level and click on the CONTINUE button. 4. Click on the "Literary" button and select from the various awards. For award winning titles that have women characters or deal with women's issues, use "Describe a Plot" and enter the following: women award. NOTE: you can also search by a specific award-e.g., women pulitzer OR women national book award.