Slides and Links for PLA Attack of the "Best" Lists Webinar

Later today [1 pm central] I will be presenting the PLA's best books wrap up webinar. This is an annual, free webinar that PLA provides to their personal members as a thank you gift.  I am excited to a be a part of this webinar both as the presenter and as a member myself.

I am honored that PLA is willing to enlist me, and my more active approach to RA service to help all of you serve your leisure readers more effectively. I am going to blow-up the entire idea of "Best" lists and how you should be using them. I am going to take examples from this year's "Best" lists and show you how to make connections to other titles depending on what you patron actually likes to read.

Be prepared because it is going to be a whirlwind of an hour, but I promise that you will be able to immediately use something I said to help a patron...today!

Every time I present, I also provide a link to the slides for all of my readers. Of course, they are most useful to those who have attended the presentation, but there is always something there for anyone who helps leisure readers in a library.

Here is the link for today's slides with the live links for you to explore. I also will keep an easy to access link in the Recent Presentations page of this blog for at least six months.  If you are encountering this post after that time frame, please feel free to contact me and I will forward you the link at any time.

I would also like to add a few more links to the presentation today.

Early Word has extensive and exhaustive compilations of all of the "Best" lists. Nora Rawlinson, the editor of Early Word, encourages you to use them to help patrons in the same ways that I outline in my presentation. An interesting side note from Nora on the lists this year:

"Of the 355 fiction titles, 251 were picked by only one source. In nonfiction, of the 281 titles, 199 got just one pick. Mining those single picks can bring up interesting overlooked titles, ripe for readers advisors." 

I couldn't agree more. Here are the quick links directly to the "Best" compilations:

2015 Best Books Fiction – V3 

2015 Best Books Nonfiction, V3 

2015 Best Books Poetry V2

During the presentation I also mention that I will be featuring a librarian who is also a self-published romance author on my blog in early 2016. Here is the link to one of this mystery person's novels, now on sale for $0.99. Check it out for yourself.

I realize that some of you may be new to this blog today, so I also wanted to welcome you. Please explore. I have been doing this for over eight years now, so there is a lot of information to take in. You can find a great introduction to me, including contact info, some interviews I have done, and even a video of me presenting here.

Now, with all that housekeeping out of the way, let's start attacking those "Best" lists together.

Click here to view slides