RA FOR ALL...THE ROAD SHOW!

I can come to your library, book club meeting, or conference to talk about how to help your readers find their next good read. Click here for more information including RA for All's EDI Statement.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Annotated Bibliography Gets a New Look

Annotated bibliographies are a RAs bread and butter. I make many lists of books on a certain topic or with a shared theme, giving each book a pity 2-4 sentence description. Click here to see examples of our annotated lists at the BPL or click here to see things I have tagged annotated lists for examples.

As useful as these lists are to patrons, they are not very sexy. Well, I think, that may be about to change. A few days ago I saw this feature in The Daily Beast in which Nicholas Kristof writes about his favorite books.

I love this presentation for an annotated bibliography. You click on the cover and enter a gallery in which with each click of a cover, another cover is revealed, all with Kristof's comments on the right. In reality it is a simple annotated list of books, but in practice it is so much more engaging to the reader.

Obviously this presentation only works on the web; it does not translate on paper. Needless to say, I am intrigued by this new presentation of an old standby. You still need to have solid and well written annotations, but the gallery begs the reader to stand-up and pay attention to your list.

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