Crime Fiction Genre Study Website is Live

As I have mentioned previously, I will be facilitating a 2 year Genre Study for the Adult Reading Roundtable on Crime Fiction.

I wanted to use my involvement as an opportunity to promote ARRT and to enrich the experience for those participating in the genre study.  Since full participation in the genre study is one of the benefits of membership, I cannot share everything here on the blog, but after suggesting a middle ground at our ARRT Steering Committee this afternoon, I think we have found a solution.

I have created a very simple website for the genre study here.  You can also find the link in the right gutter of this blog under the list with the heading “Other Sites Featuring Me.”

What you can find on the Crime Fiction Genre Study Site are things like the schedule and the assignments. For example, here is a link to the first month’s assignment.  At each meeting, notes are taken for members, both for those who come to the genre study meetings to refer to after and  for those who are members but cannot make it.  I will also post these on the website, but with a password protecting them so as to honor the paying members. [Have I mentioned membership i sonly $15? What a deal.]

Why am I going through all of this effort?  The answer is three-fold:

1. I wanted to make sure that the participants have one place where they can access all of the information pertaining to the genre study.  In the past, assignments, communications, and notes were all sent via email attachments.  Even with me keeping them all in one folder, I found it difficult to pull up what I needed or wanted quickly in year’s past. I also have plans to create a discussion board where people can contribute thoughts, links, and have conversations outside of our 6x a year meetings.
2. I wanted to share the great work ARRT does to develop RA skills and promote reading. Even if you cannot participate with us in person for the genre study, I encourage you to us these assignments for your own RA training programs.
3. I wanted to help boost our membership.  In 2014 we are looking to expand our membership outside of the Chicagoland region.  If you join as a member, you will have access to the discussion notes with the password no matter where you live. We are also going to try to offer some online content to accompany our summer program with a nationally renown speaker (tbd).

So,  take a look at the site and follow along if you’d like. We have a lot to cover in two years.

Also, as a small teaser, I am working on a pretty big post which I think will make some waves in the RA community.  I hope to have it ready tomorrow, but it might not be up until Saturday.  But it is coming soon, so keep an eye out for it.  I am hoping it energizes a lot of you out there.