Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Materials Management
I chose to explore Books & Authors, since I haven't really spent any time with this service since we switched to Gale. I was immediately charmed by the fact that their seasonal suggestions is based off of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and clicked to get more information, but also noted that they had the date in the title incorrect, despite saying right in their description of the holiday that it is celebrated every Sept. 19.
Just doing a couple of basic searches, there was a couple of things that bothered me when I compared it to Novelist, which I was told was it's equivalent service in EBSco. One is that Novelist lets you see the popularity of the titles in it's lists, while Books & Authors only has the community rating, after you click on the book, and more often than not, at least while I was exploring, nobody had rated the book at all. I also noted that while Novelist had recommended reading lists submitted by specific people, with no more than a few dozen books on it a time, in each genre for each age listing, the closest Books & Authors had was it's expert's picks and librarian's picks. These listings were actually quite interesting and could be useful, but it is nowhere as easy to look for specific subjects, especially for younger kids, as it is Novelist. All in all, I think that this site will be less useful for finding book recommendations quickly than Novelist has been for me.
Just doing a couple of basic searches, there was a couple of things that bothered me when I compared it to Novelist, which I was told was it's equivalent service in EBSco. One is that Novelist lets you see the popularity of the titles in it's lists, while Books & Authors only has the community rating, after you click on the book, and more often than not, at least while I was exploring, nobody had rated the book at all. I also noted that while Novelist had recommended reading lists submitted by specific people, with no more than a few dozen books on it a time, in each genre for each age listing, the closest Books & Authors had was it's expert's picks and librarian's picks. These listings were actually quite interesting and could be useful, but it is nowhere as easy to look for specific subjects, especially for younger kids, as it is Novelist. All in all, I think that this site will be less useful for finding book recommendations quickly than Novelist has been for me.
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