Readers' Advisory Fundamentals: Books and Beyond

• Are you involved in planning, providing and promoting advisory services to your community's adult readers, listeners, and viewers?
• Would you like to increase your comfort with responding to community member interests in locating materials that will satisfy their searches for books, audiobooks, films, and music?
• Are you ready to learn how to apply best practices in contemporary advisory, working with your library's collections and your community's assets and challenges?

In this six-week online course you will have the opportunity to learn and practice the interviewing, evaluation, and communication skills needed to provide your local community with access to satisfying leisure reading, listening, and viewing.

Note: This six-week course covers content previously offered through two separate four-week Infopeople online courses. This newly configured course has not yet received LSSC certification. The course will be repeated in Spring 2015 once LSSC approval has been given.

Course Description: Through a variety of readings and other resources, assignments and optional activities, online discussion forums, and guided field practice, this six-week online course provides: best practices, tips and techniques, and the opportunity to put them into immediate action meeting your community's interests in reading and media discovery. In addition to becoming familiar with a variety of published tools that support excellent advisory work, you will develop your own customized aids and become ready to collaborate with other agencies in your community, and beyond.

• Week 1: Readers' Advisory Basics
  • What is advisory work
  • Genres
  • Appeal factor theory
  • Advisory interviewing
• Week 2: Library Advisory Work in 2014
  • Deliver methods
  • Best practices in 2014
  • Interviewing techniques
  • What library-based advisory work isn’t
• Week 3: Library Advisory Venues
  • The library catalog
  • Technology and marketing
  • Active advisory
  • Passive advising
  • Advising remote library users
  • Social media use and the advisor
• Week 4: Growing Your Community Beyond Traditional Methods
  • Your community is unique
  • Community experts as advisors
  • Using published lists
  • Promoting commercial online advisory tools
  • Curating free advisory sites
  • Creating community through advisory planning
• Week 5: Communities Priorities Meet the Library’s Budget
  • Collaboration enhances value of library services
  • Diverse staff roles in advisory service delivery
  • Addressing specialized preferences and needs
  • Local experts beyond library staff
  • Prioritizing: Every budget is a response
  • Developing a formal advisory service plan
• Week 6: The Future Relies on Your Flexibility
  • Locating reviews of new materials
  • Prizes, long lists and short lists
  • Your advisory log, blogs and buzz
  • Assessing future advisory developments

Time Required: To complete this course, you can expect to spend 2½ hours per week, for a total of 15 course hours. Each week's module contains readings and other resources, an assignment, and various options for activities, discussions, or online meetings. You can choose the options most relevant to your work and interests. Although you can work on each module at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night, it is recommended that you complete each week's work in consecutive order as the material builds on previous weeks' content and learning.

Who Should Take This Course: Staff in any type of library who work with adults in providing, planning or promoting advisory services.

Online Learning Details and System Requirements may be found at: infopeople.org/training/online_learning_details.

Course Start: This online learning course starts on Tuesday August 26, 2014.

After the official end date for the course, the instructor will be available for limited consultation and support for two more weeks, and the course material will stay up for an additional two weeks after that. These extra weeks give those who have fallen behind time to work independently to complete the course.

Keywords: Acquisitions and serials, Adult services, Collection development, Library philosophy and fundamentals, Public services, Readers’ Advisory