RA FOR ALL...THE ROAD SHOW!

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Thursday, January 26, 2017

Resource Alert: The Great British TV Site

Longtime readers' advisors will remember the Readers' Advisory Online Blog and their amazing, detailed, and useful Weekly RA Rundown which shut down just under a year ago.

As I mentioned in this post:
I absolutely loved starting each week with the RA Rundown compiled and written by Sarah Statz Cords and Cindy Orr.  This weekly post is the only place you can go to find all the most important information for those of us who work with leisure readers, all in one place.  It was well organized into sections and had an easy to follow list structure.  I enjoyed that the information went from basic-- new and bestselling titles-- to more in depth-- essays and articles-- to training opportunities-- to author news and finally to some fun at the end.
Well, just because the Rundown stopped doesn't mean Sarah and Cindy stopped contributing to our RA Service world. Cindy is working for Overdrive while Sarah has not only continued to carry on the Rundown's mission weekly on her fantastic Citizen Reader blog, but she has also started a brand new venture, The Great British TV Site.

Recently, Sarah got in touch with me about her new resource and I was touched to find out she was inspired by one of my Call to Action posts to create it in the first place. [This is also hilarious because I was inspired to write that post because of RAO shutting down. Proof that we all inspire each other!]

I asked Sarah to share the RA and collection development potential of her new resource. Below,  you will see what she prepared for all of you. And, of course, like a good librarian, Sarah embedded a lot of links in her post, so click away as you read.

Here is Sarah to tell you all about it.

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Because you’re here reading RA for All, I know a few things about you: you probably work in a library or some type of information services; you’re interested in helping people find good reading; and you can obviously appreciate a well-written blog.

Okay, those deductions don’t put me on a par with Sherlock , especially as he’s been played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the recent BBC/Masterpiece Theatre adaptation. But if you are a readers’ (and whole library?) advisor who is interested to helping others find not only great reading material, but great viewing material, I’d like to invite you to visit my new blog featuring “viewers’ guides” and other general information about British television: The Great British TV Site.

When I worked in a public library, I was fortunate enough to work in a branch that featured a large British TV and movie DVD selection. As a result, I often got to talk with patrons about their TV viewing choices and passions, particularly BBC and PBS productions. This was a happy accident, as there are very few things in life I adore more than British television. But what if it hadn’t been an interest of mine? Well, then, as with everything else, I would most likely have turned first to Google. But I always thought, someday, if I had the time, I’d love to write some guides to British television programs to help other advisors point the way to view-alikes and related viewing.

On the site you can find general news about British TV, as well as more specific “Viewers’ Guides,” where I list program stats, like the number of seasons and episodes and cast lists, as well as a list of programs to watch next. I am also lucky enough to  have a friend in Great Britain who gives us the inside (and very British) scoop, as when she stopped by to talk about British TV holiday classics.


Please do consider visiting for your own RA and collection development needs, and please share with any patrons you feel might enjoy this type of resource!

I’ll admit I only had the time to begin this project last year when the RA awareness blog that I was lucky enough to write for many years, The Reader’s Advisor Online, ceased publicationWe had been generously sponsored for many years by ABC-CLIO, publishers of the Libraries Unlimited 
Genreflecting and Real Stories readers’ guides (in addition to many other great products). I still miss 
writing and reading that blog, but I also wanted to repeat Becky’s rallying cry for others to create similar resources.


In my own small way I try to continue to carry on the RAO torchOnce a week at my reading and nonfiction title awareness site Citizen Reader I still provide a weekly overview of book, library, and  publishing news. Please do visit me there as well, and let me know about any other types of book news or sites to which I should be linking.

Most of all, have a Happy (Reading and Viewing) New Year!

1 comment:

Cindy Orr said...

Thanks for the shout out, Becky. (Hi Sarah!) Yes, I'm working for OverDrive, but as a readers' advisor/collection development librarian along with 10 other high energy, smart, and lovely librarians. It's so much fun! Most of what we do is create carts to make it easy for librarians to purchase the most popular or vital titles out of the millions of titles available. For instance, last week we created carts of the all the ALA award winners. I also teach a class in RA for Kent State every Fall. I wonder how many other librarians teach as adjuncts or part-timers? I have a feeling it's a lot since library school professors don't seem very interested in the topic.