Student Annotations: Last of the Semester

Tonight's class is entitled, "Special Reading Interests." In this class we talk about areas of fiction where your community might have an interest. Since we have only 3 hours and we are training the librarians of Northern IL, we focus on the following four categories: Inspirational, African American (including Urban Lit), Latino/a, and GLBTQ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered and Questioning).

For these interest areas, we discuss fiction and nonfiction.  We also require the students to each try a book in one of these areas during the course of the semester.

I realize this is only a small sampling of the special reading interests out there, but for a vast majority of the librarians we are training, these will be the most common. The idea is for them to read a book and think about its appeal for more than just what genre it is. Many times, just being a book by a, for example, African American author, is an appeal factor in and of itself. This class and the required reading forces the students to think about this. So, even if you want to argue about the areas we have chosen, the exercise is useful as training for dealing with any patron's special reading interest.


Click on over to the Class Blog to see what they read this week.

Also to see what has been read in these areas in the past click on the interest area to see all posts: Inspirational, African American, Latino/a, and GLBTQ. These links are helpful if you have a patron (or yourself) who wants to read one of these books.

That's it for annotations this semester. Joyce will teach the class this summer, so I will post their work.  The students still have finals, so, at the least, I will have a few more reading maps to add to the class archive in a few weeks.