Welcome to the final installment in our Assessing RA Skills series, the inspiration for which we thank Molly Moss, the Fiction-L contributor who first asked how best to assess staff members’ RA skills.

So far we have discussed possible RA competencies and ways to determine how comfortable people are with their own RA skills, but today we’d like to hear any final ideas from YOU, our readers, about how to get started with such an assessment and training program.

*How do YOU start thinking about how to train your colleagues and staff members?

*Have you tried any specific readers’ advisory training in your libraries?

*Is there a way to combine the assessment stage with the training stage, since we are all (more than ever before) doing more with less, both in terms of staff time and resources?

We’d also like to know what ways you’ve found to combine training with actual job duties. Is it practical to ask staff members to produce booklists, bookmarks, and even book talks or book blogging, BEFORE they’ve been trained, as a way of performing such training? Let us know!

And thanks for participating in our discussion on this topic!

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And welcome to our fourth installment on how to help managers and trainers assess their staff members’ RA skills and knowledge.

Previously we looked at questions to assess advisors’ familiarity with titles and genres; today we look at the flip side of the equation, and how to assess how we work with readers. What kinds of questions can be asked here?

Please help us answer this question in the comments; our suggestions below are just that–suggestions, and (hopefully) jumping-off points for further discussion.

Questions to Ask Staff

Another point to ponder: would you have staff answer these questions as essay questions, or would you give them a scale (if possible)? For example: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being not comfortable and 10 being quite comfortable, how comfortable are you answering readers’ advisory questions?

Activities
1. RA “Speed Dating.” Call a staff meeting, and ask people to interview each other on reading tastes (and have them rotate partners periodically). How comfortable does your staff seem with this exercise?

2. As a manager, take the time to work a desk shift with your staff members. You won’t always get the chance, but you may be able to observe them working with readers.

3. Ask your staff members to interview you on your reading tastes and have them suggest a few titles; return the favor for them. Then, look at the books suggested, and discuss how both of you feel about the suggestions that were made.

Do any of these ideas work for you? Let us know your opinions (and your ideas) in the comments!

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One of the more basic competencies we found for the practice of reader’s advisory was the idea that RAs should have some level of familiarity with an array of fiction and nonfiction authors and titles. But what is the best way to determine staff members’ skills in this area? Listed below are just a few ideas for assessing this skill. What do you think? Would these suggestions take too long? Make your staff uncomfortable? Not properly assess their knowledge? Please help us continue this discussion in the comments!

Possible Ways to Assess Title Familiarity:

1. If giving a written assessment, simply ask staff to write authors’ names under representative genres including romance, mystery, thriller, literary fiction, biography, memoir, or true crime (just to name a few). How many can they name?

2. Along similar lines, ask staff to submit a list of authors they like to read. (Actually, they could probably do this anonymously, you could still assess staff knowledge as a whole) Could you broaden this list to include magazines or newspapers regularly read, or favorite movies?

3. Combine assessment and training: ask staff members to volunteer to give a short demo at a regular staff meeting about a specific genre, whether one they enjoy or want to learn more about, perhaps talking about a few representative authors and making a list of resources about that genre?

4. Make it a game: make a list of current hot bestseller titles to read aloud, asking participants to write down the corresponding author (give a bonus point for naming another title by the same author!).

5. For a more extensive evaluation, purchase the ARRT Popular Fiction List questionnaire: it’s a little out of date, but has very extensive questions in 14 genre categories.

What are your ideas for assessing this area of knowledge? Let us know!

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Recently we found ourselves intrigued by a Fiction-L post in which a librarian wanted to know how to assess their staff’s RA skills. In our first post on this subject, we provided links to some “RA Competencies” documents; today, we thought we might pull a few of the competencies listed in those documents before we start to formulate assessment questions about them.

How’s about it? Which of the attributes below are truly important to RA work? Please weigh in in the comments section!

1. Basic familiarity with fiction and nonfiction titles and authors.

2. Understanding of the appeal factors of books.

3. Ability to annotate books, give book talks, make book lists for titles linked by subject, style, and genre.

4. Understanding of people as readers and as patrons/customers.

5. Collection knowledge: knowing titles in own and system’s collection; knowing databases and tools for RA available through the system; understanding of various formats and reader resources available from one’s own library.

6. Ability to interview readers in order to solicit their reading and format preferences.

7. Familiarity with “whole collection RA,” including music and film collections.

Are those the basics? Do you agree that these skills are necessary to provide good RA service? What are we missing? We’ll give everyone a little bit of time to review the documents in the first post (and its comments), and to add or discuss more competencies in this post. Then next week, we’ll move on to Part 3.

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Someone raised a GREAT issue at Fiction-L the other day: before advertising her library’s RA services, this person wanted to know how to assess her staff’s RA comfort levels and competency before addressing training needs.

Huh, I thought. There’s a new take on the issue. Because I received no training in RA in library school, and even less in the library*, I’m always interested in articles and theories on how to train advisors (and library staff in general, including the pages who shelve the books). But all this time I’d been missing a vital step: how to assess the skills your staff people already have.

Unfortunately it seems that once again this is a question that is rather drawing a blank at Fiction-L. After entirely fruitless searches for books or online materials about training and skills assessment that could be adapted to the library/RA world (this doesn’t mean they’re not out there–it’s means I’m a lazy internet searcher) I started wondering if:

1. We could work backwards from work already done on RA “competencies,” and formulate assessment questions from there; and

2. If that would be something we could do here, collaboratively, at the RAO blog. Who’s with me?

I thought what we might do is examine some competencies lists (a few are listed and linked to below) and then, on separate days, tackle one competency at a time and formulate some questions or scales that might assess how library staff feel about their own skills in those areas. Maybe it won’t work. But I think it’s time we tried something.

First? A few competencies suggestions. If you know of more or use different criteria in your libraries, please let us know in the comments!

• Minnesota Career Renewal for Library Employees RA Competencies
• Ontario Public Library Association RA Core Competencies
• What Does It Take? RA article by Sharron Smith
• ALA RA Competencies for Support Staff
• And last but not least, a word about “Core Competencies” in general

Do you know of other competency lists? If so, please let us know so we can include them before we go on to the next step.

Stay tuned for future articles and discussion on this subject!

*No harm, no foul here. I realize that a lot of times the librarians in charge of training new staff on the desk are given very little time or support to do so, and have never been “trained to be trainers” themselves. But it’s a reality we need to face up to.

For more on lack of education and training in RA service, see Connie Van Fleet’s “Education in Readers’ Advisory Service in Library and Information Science Programs” and “Dynamics of Readers’ Advisory Education: How Far Can We Go” by Cindy Orr.

Watch for Part 2 in this series next week.

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Don’t miss reading this behind-the-scenes look at how a veteran readers advisor handled one of those patrons who wants something that doesn’t fall neatly into any of the usual categories.

It’s a terrific story on its own, but I think it also illustrates some basic truths for anyone who aspires to be a topnotch readers advisor:

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It’s been a big news year for business and economics, although, unfortunately, most of the news has not been good. But it’s definitely a subject area that’s on a lot of readers’ minds. For those readers who aren’t interested in business nonfiction, however, or who need some good thrilling escapist fare, the subgenre of Business and Financial Thrillers might be a good one to explore.

Defined in RAO as “Suspenseful stories in which international corporations, ultra-wealthy business tycoons, and political entities attempt to manipulate and influence national economies,” these books “often feature glamorous descriptions of wealth and power, exotic locales and lifestyles, and typically include at least one murder, with multiple forms of mayhem as well.” Representative authors and titles in this subgenre include:

Jeffrey Archer, The Winner
Paul Erdman, The Set-Up
Joseph Finder, Power Play
Stephen Frey, Shadow Account
Brad Meltzer, The Millionaires
Christopher Reich, The First Billion

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Tip #4 Keep a reading log.

Keeping a log of what you read is extremely helpful. I’ve tried many different methods and learned a lot from my mistakes. I first decided to keep a reading log when I saw readers come into the library with theirs when looking for books. Usually it was mystery readers with little spiral bound notebooks. I had the strange notion that if I were to start a reading log it had to start on January 1st. This was a bad idea. First of all one is just getting past the holidays and New Year’s Day is in and of itself a holiday which makes it very difficult to remember to start a new project. Finally after several years of not starting my reading log because I hadn’t started on January 1st I decided to just go for it.

I set aside a section in the back of my day planner and wrote in the month at the top of a page. Then, as I read books I added the author, title, and an initial or two to indicate the genre. If I really liked a book I added a star. Each month I would start a new page with the name of the month at the top. It was pretty easy to rifle through the pages and find something that was vaguely remembered when I need to find the author and title for a reader. This worked really well but then I decided that it would be nice to add an annotation, publication date, and other miscellaneous information. It was a perfect use for a database. I soon discovered that when I was trying to be elaborate with my book log that I avoided entering my books. I didn’t go as far as not reading, but it looked like I had because if I didn’t feel like writing an annotation I wouldn’t put the book in my log. Not a good thing!

When I started using a PDA instead of a day planner I used a page in “memos� for each month. I eventually did go to a database because of my work with the Genreflecting series. I’m now using GoodReads online for my reading log. I’m never out of touch with the web site and even if I travel out of the country and leave my laptop at home I can log in from an internet café. Using GoodReads (or if you prefer LibraryThing or Shelfari – they all do similar things) I can enter the books I read. The program links to the bibliographic information which means less typing for me. It has space for a review, allows me to categorize by genre and intended reader, and lets me rate each book.

The important thing about keeping a reading log is that it helps cement details of books read and is handy to refer to when trying to remember a book for a reader.

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Tip #1 – Read

Read voraciously, or at least as much as you can. Take a book with you wherever you go. Listen to audio books when you can’t be reading.

Tip #2 –Read Outside Your Comfort Zone

When you stay with what you know you never learn anything new.

Tip #3– Follow a Reading Plan

My first paying public services library job was at Hadley Branch of the Denver Public Library. The branch manager, Loren Tabor, was an amazing librarian. She believed in reader’s advisory although I don’t remember her ever using the term, but everyone who worked the reference desk was expected to be able to help guide people to what they wanted to read. This was in the days before the great reader’s advisory tools we have now. In fact, I didn’t know of any reader’s advisory tools at all. Anyway, Loren thought it was important to read widely to learn how books were different. She composed a plan with me where I would read different genres and types of books. The reading plan looked something like this:

Mystery novel
Young Adult novel
Historical novel
Spy novel
Children’s book
Romance novel
Western
Start all over again
Mystery novel (if the last time through was an American writer this time I should choose a British writer)

I didn’t have science fiction or fantasy in my reading plan because those were my favorite genres and I was already reading them.

Following the reading plan, especially the second swipe at it, really revealed how useful this was. I was shocked by how different the Harlequin romance I read the first time through was from Shanna by Katheen Woodiwiss.

After I graduated from library school and went back to public services in public libraries, I decided to continue with my reading plan but by then I had a great tool to use – Betty Rosenberg’s first and second editions of Genreflecting. It made the reading plan very easy. I could just go through the chapters in order and select my next read from each different subgenre or type.

I try to read widely and informally, keeping a reading plan in mind. Every once in a while it is time to go back and do it in a more structured way. I think this time through I’ll use the Reader’s Advisor Online Genre Tree. One of the advantages is that I’ll really be building my skills with RA for nonfiction because the RAO Genre Tree includes the types of nonfiction readers read for pleasure.

Happy reading.

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