Happy 15th Anniversary RA for All

Tomorrow, August 6th, marks the 15th Anniversary of the start of RA for All. As I close in on 4,000 posts here and 1,000 on the horror blog. I wanted to just take a moment to honor where it all began. 

It was a vey modest beginning. At the time I had been teaching the RA class as an adjunct faculty member at Dominican University's MLIS program with Joyce Saricks for 3 years. I was also working at the Berwyn Public Library in the RA Department for 7 years at that point. 

Blogging was fairly new, but I turned to it mostly so I had a place to showcase and share the wonderful work my students were doing. It was not easy then. I had to use FTP to upload and store their work on the University's server, but I knew their annotations and observations were worth saving so that the next class of students could also have access. And if the next class, and the class after, etc.... could, why shouldn't everyone?

I also realized that all of the work I was doing for the class and my day job should be shared more widely. What good was all of this knowledge if I kept it to myself?

I had the idea but I needed a name. I came up with RA for All because it was short and to the point. I wanted to share my RA info with everyone, I wanted to help all types of library workers be better at serving leisure readers-- not just Librarians-- and I wanted it all to be easy to access for free. Hence it was Readers' Advisory for everyone.

That blog grew, as did my work as an independent presenter and trainer. And since the "RA for All" name was working, I turned it into a company. And here we are today. 15 years later.

I thought it would be fun to repost that first post today. It seems so far away, and yet, I am still holding true to my initial mission which makes me happy. 

But what makes me happiest is how many of you out in the library world have come along for the ride here. Thank you all for serving your leisure readers as best you can. I am glad to be a small part of your success.

And please remember, 15 years of RA for All means that there is a treasure trove of backlist information that I have amassed. Use the tags in the right gutter to explore deeper into the archives. 

I thought about ending it with a "here's to 15 more" statement, but I don't feel like that is in the cards. Time will tell but, for now, let's enjoy what we have here.

Thank you all for your support.

MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 2007

Welcome to RA for All

RA for All is a showcase of the wonderful world of Readers' Advisory (RA). But what is RA? Readers' Advisory is a patron oriented, nonjudgmental public library service that strives to help fiction and nonfiction readers find books to read for enjoyment. Anyone interested in a more detailed description of RA Service should head to their local public library and look up Joyce Saricks' Readers' Advisory in the Public Library, 3rd edition (ALA, 2005).

So you like to read...there are many ways the local public library can help you find your next good read. This blog will highlight how the library can best help its patrons. I will post interesting links, lists, and news in the RA world. I will also highlight some of my student's work from the RA class at Dominican University's Graduate School of Library and Information Science (IL)...Yes, there is an entire class on this stuff.

There are many great book review blogs, and while I will post quick reviews of my recent reads, this blog will try to provide a wider commentary on the world of leisure reading and public libraries.