Romance Training

I was feeling like a bad RA librarian as I was helping a romance reader today.  Not because I couldn't help her, but in helping her I realized that I have not been keeping up on my romance authors, resources, and trends.

So first thing I did after helping her was to sign myself up for the September 10th Booklist free webinar entitled "A Passion for Romance":

"Find out about newly available classics and the most alluring of soon-to-come titles in this free, hour-long webinar that highlights the rich and pleasurable happily-ever-after variety this ever-popular genre generates. Romance and genre fiction expert Diana Tixier Herald talks about her favorite romance novels, and representatives from Baker Publishing Group, HarperCollins Publishers, and Severn House offer exclusive previews of their forthcoming titles. Booklist senior editor Donna Seaman moderates."

After feeling better about planning some training for myself, I began to tackle this month's  Library Journal Romance reviews and also found out here that the newest growth area in historical romances right now is the Victorian era.

Okay, I am making some progress.

Then I went to the Romance Writers Of America's homepage to see who won their annual, prestigious RITA Awards for 2013.  Again, shamefully, they were handed out on July 20th, and this is the first time I am checking.  You can click here to see the complete list.

Finally, I gave a quick look over the BPL's Funny Romance list which reminded me that my friends over at the Skokie Public Library have this huge list of romance lists.

Why I am detailing this for all of you though? Because, I wanted to make 2 points.

First, every single one of us, no matter how good we are at our jobs, has areas of weakness.  We need to be able to identify where we have gaps and then find a way to fill them in.

Second, training does not have to be planned out months in advance and/or cost a lot of money.  In a few hours this morning I was able to sign up for a more formal training, learn a bit about current romance trends, see who the "best" authors are right now, and read through more than a dozen themed romance lists giving me some information about titles and authors broken up by popular themes or subgenres.

I hope this helps you too.