Resource Reminder: Paste Magazine: Helpful Coverage for Just About Everything We Circulate

Today my email box and Twitter feed are full of people sending me the link to the excellent and modernized list from Paste Magazine, “The 50 Best Horror Novels of All Time.” [Although it has nothing by Brian Keene or Stephen Graham Jones- Mongrels is a modern classic for any genre, but otherwise, it is a good list for all libraries to use].

This influx of others linking me to Paste reminds me that Paste is a resource I use regularly but haven’t talked about here on the blog in a while.

Paste Magazine’s books coverage is a wonderful resource for library workers as we work with readers on the desk. Below I have compiled a quick list highlighting the different types of articles they have and how to best use their book coverage as we work with readers at the service desk:

• Like the list mentioned above, Paste regularly creates lists AND indexes them well. If you use their Books::Lists:: tag, you can pull them all up at once and peruse them, use them for displays, make suggestions to patrons, or just use them to start conversations with readers. Here are three recent lists that would make a great display, for example:
• 10 Must-Listen Audiobooks Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
• 10 Young Adult Books The Should Be Made Into TV Shows [this one is great because you can ask patrons to submit their own titles].
• 15 Books You Should Read to Understand Modern Journalism
• They make best lists for each month for both adult and YA separately. And they then tag it all for easy retrieval in their “Best” index. So As 2018 goes on the “Best 2018” tag grows with content. You can help a reader who wants a great, recent read by pulling up a book from the January list, for example. It will probably be on the shelf now. You can even easily access past lists [that link searches "Best of 2017.” You can go to the search box and put in other years to retrieve past year’s best lists too].
• They also make lists of the best covers for each month. I have posted about covers and their importance in the past here, but Cliff’s Notes version of that post is, you should judge a book by its cover.
• For those that want a little bit of a deeper dive, they regularly publish features in the books section using the Books::Features:: tag. These range from reviews to essays about how a book affected the writer to a general look at trends, or anything else that the features writers are interested in pursuing. The range of topics is astounding, but realistic because books can take you anywhere. These features are good information, fun to read, and also a great conversation starter with patrons. They will have you thinking a little more broadly about the newest titles, trends, and overall book world news. 

Finally, the very best things about Paste Magazine-- they have all of this wonderful level of smart and comprehensive coverage for Comics, TV, Movies, Music, and Games in their own separate tabs. I especially love the summaries of all of the TV series I will never get the chance to watch but need to know about in order to help patrons. Literally all of the things we check out, they have in depth coverage on. So everything for books x5, 5 more formats what we work with everyday. There are very few resources that cover so much of what we circulate all in one place.

Take some time to poke around and try using Paste to help a reader, gamer, or viewer today.