Readers advisory for non-fiction?
June 26th, 2005 by KatieMy day has been interesting. After getting lost in McCormick Place, and putting about a half mile or more on my gymshoes, I managed to catch part of the RUSA/PLA program, “Taking the Guesswork out of Non-Fiction Readers Advisory”. By the time I got there, all of the handouts were gone, but I heard that they would be putting them up on the RUSA CODES page. Part of why I got lost is because when I first went by the room, I thought it was the 3M Six Sigma presentation as there were people spilling out of the room (think mini-banquet room), and that was the signage that I saw. After the ALA staff reassuring me that was the correct room, I hoofed it back in time to hear the recaps of each tables assessment of the, let’s say, genres that they were assigned. I’ve been to other workshops where non-fiction readers advisory (NFRA) was either the only topic or one of the topics that was discussed. I had not realized how popular a movement it is turning into. I think librarians already do NFRA, but they don’t think of it in terms of RA, and may think that the idea of applying skills that you would use for fiction RA is somehow incorrect. A lot of librarians who are already into fiction RA, are excited about NFRA. I think we need to not only work on our skills, but also work on the librarians who are already heavily into non-fiction to think of what they do as readers advisory. There is a lot of thought and research going into NFRA right now, and ideas and concerns that are a bit long too big to condense at this point (there is a line of people behind me at the Internet Cafe), so if you’re interested in NFRA, talk to people in your area, read Joyce Saricks in her different venues, and look for the book coming from ALA next spring (?) on the topic.
Tags: ALA2005, conferences
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