Stay on Top of Book Awards Schedules for RA and Collection Development

Regular readers know that I bang the drum often on the topic of Using Awards Lists as a RA and Collection Development Tool.  Here is the direct link to the first time I brought it up, and here is a list of every time I have posted about it since, in reverse chronological order. Each of those posts links back to the original, but they are worth glancing at because I do add something each time....like today!

Every single literary award list can be used in four different ways to help with:

1. Collection Development [identify key titles and authors]
2. Readalikes 
3. Displays 
4. As a resource itself [to get yourself up to speed]

Again, all of this is explained in detail in that first post on this topic. But there are A LOT of awards and it is hard to keep up with every single one. Also, it would be helpful to know in advance which awards are being announced when, especially genre ones which are not only a resource for our genre readers, but are a key tool for us to stay up to speed on all the different genres.

Even I don’t always remember which awards are when. I know vaguely when to expect announcements, but “vague” is not ideal for planning purposes. Also there are so many awards that I often forget about some until after I could have referred to them for a specific RA question. 

Well, 5 Minute Librarian has come to our rescue here on both counts as they have an easy to use calendar, listing of all the book awards by month, and broken up by age level, with a link directly to each award page-- The Ultimate Book Awards Calendar. Now you need to go to one place for every award, its date, and just click. You don’t need to remember because they have done it for us.

Bookmark this page to use for all 4 reasons above. Seriously, you can find a reason to use this page just about every day to help a patron, improve your collection, or teach yourself.

Awards lists really do make the best RA Tool. Thanks to the 5 Minute Librarian Team who have an entire site of useful posts that get you the info you need to do your job, efficiently and effectively.