Are there reading/interest levels for graphic novels when recommending them to patrons?

There are quite a few good resources in both print and online that can aid you in you in finding age/interest levels in your graphic novel readers’ advisory work. They use various rating systems, so you will want to check their explanatory remarks.

Here are some books that you might find on your shelves:

500 Essential Graphic Novels: The Ultimate Guide by Gene Kannenberg (2008)
Divided into by genre and designates age levels as All ages, 12+, 15+ and 18+.

Graphic Novels: A Genre Guide to Comic Books, Manga, and More by Michael Pawuk (2007)
More inclusive than Kannenberg, listing all titles within series. Age levels are All ages, 10 and above, 13-15, 16-17, 18 and older.

The Librarian's Guide to Graphic Novels For Children and Tweens by David S. Serchay (2008)
Targeted specifically towards younger readers, this book uses the following age categories: younger elementary, older elementary and junior high, tweens and early teens, all ages (but appealing more to younger readers).

The Readers' Advisory Guide to Graphic Novels by Francisca Goldsmith (2010)
While this book is the most current and has much useful information on readers’ advisory, its only special designations are “appropriate for younger readers (under sixteen in some communities, as young as under twelve in others)” and “crossover titles for readers unfamiliar with the format.”

Two good books devoted exclusively to manga are:

Manga: The Complete Guide by Jason Thompson (2007)
Includes age levels with film rating equivalents: All ages (G-PG), 13+ (PG-PG13), 16+ (PG13-R), 18+ (‘hard’ R- NC17).

Understanding Manga and Anime by Robin E. Brenner (2007)
Contains both the publishers’ age ratings and the recommendations of the author (grades 6-8, grades 7-9, grades 9-12, adult).

Web Resources

YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens
Lists for 12-18 year-olds beginning 2007; with a top ten list for each year.

No Flying No Tights
Includes three separate sections of reviews: the Main site for teens, Sidekicks for ages through 12, and the Lair for older teens and adults.

Graphic Novels: Resources for Teachers & Librarians
Lists of recommended titles (by genre) for all ages, younger teens (11-14), older teens (17 and older,) plus a list of titles recommended for girls and a list of “teen favorites not recommended for younger readers.” The site also includes lists by genre and publisher.

Checking publisher web pages can also give you information on age levels. One very good example is the Dark Horse Comics page for libraries. The backlist is even sorted by age level (8+, 10+, 12+, 14+, 16+, 18+, all ages).

You can keep up-to date by reading reviews in professional journals:

• VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates)
• School Library Journal
• Library Journal
• Booklist
• Publisher’s Weekly

And, of course, knowing your collection and your readers is the best way of knowing what titles to recommend.

Library Blogs

Here at the LATI Blog, we asked librarian Ray Cruitt to write a blog post about librarian blogs and how to keep up. His report follows:

I was asked to write a blog post about librarian blogs. I hadn’t kept up with them for some time, but remembered when I first became interested in being a librarian, about seven years ago, how surprised I was by the large number of them. It was intriguing; I had never been exposed to professional-oriented blogging before, and librarians seemed to have this genre covered in spades!

Since then, not only have there been a proliferation of library-related blogs, but also other professional-oriented blogs: pharmacist, police officer, waiter/server, and even a garbage man blog exists on the Internet.

There are several prominent library themes: for instance, The Union Librarian, by Kathleen de la Peña McCook is written by a well-known academic librarian involved in the Progressive Librarian Guild, a very left-of-center organization. She is a supporter of the unionization of libraries. Walt at Random is a blog that addresses many subjects relevant to librarians, from librarian blogs and bloggers to technology to library policy issues; it is written by Walt Crawford, a well known name in the library field who describes himself as a voice for the “radical middle.” On another side of the spectrum is the Conservative Librarian, the Government Information and Political Science Librarian from Purdue University, who writes very little, if anything, about librarianship, yet keeps the “Librarian” as part of his identity. He mostly writes about conservative politics. One thing is for certain, library blogs tend to be partisan affairs.

Another popular genre of library blog is the kind that either provides a forum for other librarians to vent about patrons or relate funny patron experiences, such as the LiveJournal site The Society for Librarians Who Say “M…” (ah, well, maybe I should refrain from stating the rest of the name, it isn’t exactly rated G). If you don’t like to say the “M” word, but still want to post about weird, funny, or disturbing patron stories, you can always check out the Merry Librarian (oddly enough, it starts with an M, as well!).

There are four blogs that I would like to highlight. One is old news, another is new, but based on an older group, one is thoughtful, and the other a great place to get technology news and analysis.

1) Best of Publib:

Publib is a listserv that was established in 1992 and now has over 8000 subscribers. Best of Publib is a blog that was established as a means to conveniently find some of the more interesting threads that have been woven over the years on the listserv. This new blog is an especially good resource for public librarians doing research on a subject relevant to their work. Along with some of the more serious topics there are plenty of fun threads that only a public librarian can relate to.

2) The Annoyed Librarian

As mentioned above, I’m including an old news librarian blog, The Annoyed Librarian (AL, as she is prominently known). This pseudonymous provocateur has resonated over the years with many librarians who sometimes wonder about the direction of their profession and professional organizations. With subjects ranging from the nature of the MLS degree requirement to the political nature of the ALA and the ALA Council, this librarian weighs-in on the critical side. Of course, this fact and “her” pseudonymous identity have annoyed many librarians, which is part of the allure. The AL has her favorite subjects, the ALA Council and its non-library related political resolutions, the Progressive Library Guild, Library 2.0, and the perceived drifting away of the public library’s original charter to afford the appropriate resources for a educated society. Tip: just don’t take “her” too seriously. It’s all in good fun!

3) Academic Librarian

The Academic Librarian is the head librarian for the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Princeton University. Although, his main sphere of librarianship is the academic world, his views, many times, transcend that of his particular specialty and are applicable to all librarians. The ideas treated in this blog are articulately expressed and there is always something in his posts to think about. It is a nice antidote to the partisan and snarky librarian blogs that populate the Web, including the Annoyed Librarian! Some topics recently covered: the ethics of library school students posing as patrons on reference chat, millennials, and reading.

4) Disruptive Library Technology Jester

This blog is all about technology and its influence on library and educational institutions. While there are many technology-related library blogs, the majority of them seem to be only concerned with the promotion of social networking or Library 2.0 technologies. As the name of this blogger entails, his main mission, the Jester’s mission, is to give the “raw facts,” as critical as they may be, about all the technologies available to libraries, whether ultimately useful or not. The Jester’s role has always been to entertain while simultaneously telling it like it is. This blog goes a long way in accomplishing this.

Review Thursday: Nonfiction

The Back Door Guide to Short-Term Job Adventures: Internships, Summer Jobs, Seasonal Work, Volunteer Vacations, and Transitions Abroad by Michael Landes (2005)

Do you know a recent graduate looking for experience? Maybe there is a library customer who is trying to make a career change but needs to gain certain skills to improve his/her resume. The Back Door Guide to Short-Term Job Adventures: Internships, Summer Jobs, Seasonal Work, Volunteer Vacations, and Transitions Abroad offers a number of possible venues as tools for their job search.

Michael Landes starts with a number of life-planning exercises and leads into a variety of sections, which include real-life stories, websites, and associations for further exploration. Each section outlines whether the experience offers a stipend or if it’s a volunteer opportunity. Some programs are geared specifically for college students or recent graduates, while others are open for anyone over eighteen. The reviews also offer contact information and how to apply for participation. Short-term work may be the tool you need to build the skills, experience, and connections with people to get to the next phase in the job search.

Maryland Libraries & Social Media

Here at the LATI Blog, we recently got a request to investigate how Maryland libraries are using social media and what success the libraries have had with it. Today we bring you the scoop on what the Harford County Public Library (HCPL) system is doing!

Dave McLaughlin, webmaster at the forefront of HCPL's official social media efforts had the following to share:

Harford County Public Library has recently started and ramped up a number of social networking initiatives. We have a Facebook page and Twitter account, both of which are used to broadcast updates from our website and special messages, such as closings, etc. We are also posting many photos from renovation projects, recent programs, etc. to Flickr and have started a YouTube channel that is currently used for advocacy videos and our iPhone app promotional video.

We will continue to expand these presences, but in the last month and a half (since the launch of our new website, on which we display a Facebook logo that links to our Facebook page) our number of fans on Facebook has quadrupled. Customers are commenting on our Facebook page and tweeting about us and we are able to engage them in discussions via both services.

One quick success story:

With all of the recent snow, we made sure to quickly post any information about closings to our social networking accounts. One day, shortly after posting that we would be closed, customers started a discussion on our Facebook page that went like this:

"So, if I have movies due tomorrow I won't get charged?"

"No - they said yesterday that no fines will be charged for items due when the library is closed - as long as they are returned the next day."

"are the parking lots cleared so we can at least drop them off when we are able to get out of our homes?"

"Abingdon was clear when I went by a couple hours ago"

"Do you need volunteers to help clear the backlog?"

While we are generally pretty quick at responding to comments and questions, our customers were answering other customers’ questions before we even had a chance. We followed up with more information, but I consider this a huge success!

Who are the People in Your State Library Resource Center

Meet Sarah Kuperman!
Selection Librarian
Collection Management Department
Enoch Pratt Free Library/State Library Resource Center

What do you do?
I select materials for the State Library Resource Center and for Pratt Library too. I select both fiction and non fiction print materials and I work with some database selection and our statewide ebooks consortium as well.

How did you get here?
After I graduated from college, I took a job as an assistant in the Reference Department of a small public library. The librarians I met there were a wonderful supportive encouraging and fun bunch of people. Their encouragement led to my going off to library school in Chicago, then jobs in Boston, and NYC before I settled in Baltimore.

What’s your favorite thing about your job?
I get to review a wide range of materials in my job. It's very interesting to me to see the trends in publishing as ideas are brought forth, reviewed, reworked and developed. As a SLRC selector I am looking for a wide range of high level materials, for Pratt Library I want to get the popular materials that suit the branch needs. In my job, I get to look at everything.

What’s a book that you didn’t expect to like – but did?
Emily Post by Laura Claridge. How could a biography about a person who is well behaved be interesting? But Claridge uses Emily's life to describe a social history of America beginning just post Civil War to WWII. Emily Post had a close connection with Baltimore, which surprised me. She wrote the first edition of her book on Etiquette in 1922, but she was always revising and updating her book. In the WWII era, the military bought and distributed thousands of copies of the 1945 edition in order to help soldiers feel comfortable in unfamiliar situations. Emily was a strong supporter of young people and the changes they made in social behavior. Her goal was not to lay down rules and regs, but to provide guidelines to help people feel comfortable in social settings. Her underlying rule was that one should never discomfort another person.

What is your favorite SLRC program, service, or training?
I am a fan of the Fiction Department's "What do you recommend ..?" They always give an interesting set of presentations.

What do you do when you’re not reading?
I am very involved with my wonderful family.

Review Thursday: Fiction

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009)

Dr. Faraday is the son of lower class parents who have worked hard and sacrificed to give him the chance to become a doctor. His mother was once a maid at the grand mansion of Hundreds Hall. When he was a child she took him for a visit to the house, where he was struck with admiration for its richness and beauty, a symbol of the upper class and all that was unobtainable to him. Now working quite hard himself, he still lives on a tight budget and is very conscious of the gap between himself and those born to money.

When Dr. Faraday revisits Hundreds Hall to attend to a sick maid, he is shocked and dismayed at the house’s current state of decay. After the death of the head of the household, the fortunes of the survivors of the family declined to the point where only a portion of the home could be kept in a state fit for human habitation, the rest crumbling and disused. Dr. Faraday finds more occasions to call on the residents of the house - Mrs. Ayres, the still elegant widow, her daughter Caroline, a “brainy” woman who is considered likely to remain a spinster, and son Roderick, scarred by his experience in World War II and prone to moodiness and possible mental instability. He volunteers to treat Roderick’s war injury and becomes privy to Roderick’s carefully guarded concerns that there is a malevolent presence in the house. Faraday persists in holding a rational view of events, but as increasingly curious things occur at the house he finds his beliefs challenged.

This is a portrait of a family in decline for those who like character-driven historical fiction as well as classic ghost stories. Because Waters’ descriptions of the haunting are both subtle and ambiguous, this book stay in your head long after you read it.

Do you have any readers’ advisory recommendations for reluctant elementary male readers – other than guysread.org?

Apparently, reports of the death of reading among boys have not been exaggerated. According to Guys Read, self-described as “a web-based literacy program for boys, ”research shows that boys are having trouble reading and that boys are getting worse at reading.” The problem is one of image. Reading, an erstwhile hairy-chested, two-fisted pastime, is viewed by today’s (male) youth as an irrelevant activity for girls. Boys would be voracious readers if books didn’t seem so contemptibly lacking in vigor.

Apart from Guys Read, where should a librarian performing readers’ advisory work for boys turn to find gravel-in-the-gut, grit-in-the-eye free voluntary reading material? As it happens, there are a number of print and electronic resources to aid in readers’ advisory work. These resources include:
Print

• Best Books for Children by Catherine Barr and John Gillespie. Libraries Unlimited, 2007.
  
  
• Historical Fiction for Young Readers by John Gillespie. Libraries Unlimited, 2008.
  
  
• The Big Book of Children's Reading Lists: 100 Great, Ready-to-Use Book Lists for Educators, Librarians, Parents, and Children by Nancy Keane. Libraries Unlimited, 2006.
  
  
• A to Zoo by Carolyn and John Lima. Libraries Unlimited, 2008.
  
  
• Best Books for Boys: A Resource for Educators by Matthew Zbaracki. Libraries Unlimited, 2008.

Websites

• Read, Kiddo, Read
  
  
• Book Hive
  
  
• Planet Esme

Databases

• Books & Authors

Review Thursday: Fiber Gathering

Fiber Gathering by Joanne Seiff is a celebration of the fiber arts. Rather than simply offering patterns for knitting or crocheting, Seiff introduces the reader to fiber festivals around the country. Traveling coast to coast from Maryland Sheep and Wool, one of the oldest and largest in the country, to the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene Oregon, the reader gets a picture of the vibrant culture of the fiber community. Each festival has its own character where Seiff met “warm, kind people who rushed to embrace this idea of festival as much more than just buying and selling.”(xi) She made me want to pack my bags and spend a year going from festival to festival. If you can’t do that, she tells you how to build your own.

This book is not just a travelogue. Each festival provides inspiration with patterns to try or instructions to follow. Seiff has included a wide range of fiber activities for you to try. For example, have you ever wanted to paint your own yarn? Detailed instructions are here. Or, what on earth do people do with the fleece as it comes off the sheep? This book will show you. Knitting, crocheting and rug hooking are not forgotten either. So, whether you are just curious about the fiber arts or if you are an experienced artist, there is something in this book for you.

Is there a source which recommends books for adults who are very poor readers (primary level readers with adult interests)?

These kinds of books, known as hi/lo (high interest/low reading level) are useful for people with learning disabilities, new readers of English, and reluctant readers, among others. There are numerous websites that provide lists of books that fall into this category. For example:

Resource Room
A list of more than a dozen sites, most of them belonging to publishers. Two are especially handy: Michelle Stimson (see information about her firm Wegottaread.com which offers free short stories to download) who writes urban contemporary Christian fiction; and
L_MNet the international school media specialists’ listserv which offers lists of hi/low books through its archives.

YALSA
The Young Adult Services Association of ALA compiles an annual list of recommended fiction and nonfiction for reluctant teen readers. Many of the titles will appeal to adults as well.

The Center for Adult Literacy
Based at Georgia State University, the Center offers a broad spectrum of information, including an extensive list of annotated hi/lo books divided into more than fifteen subject areas.

Madison (WI) Public Library
This annotated list, created by staff of this excellent public library, covers choices for both middle and high school reluctant readers. There are quite a few of the latter that would engage adults.

High Noon Books
This publisher specializes in hi/lo materials and has a useful website listing the books by readability levels and by subjects.

Reader and Language Arts Center, Inc.
Like High Noon Books, this is a publisher specializing in providing materials for teachers, tutors, and students of all ages to help the latter reach their potential as readers.

Review Thursday: New Nonfiction

Daughters of Aquarius: Women of the Sixties Counterculture by Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo (2009)

The images are familiar: Janis Joplin wails to the strains of “Ball and Chain” on the stage at the Monterey Pop Festival. Grace Slick with the Jefferson Airplane adjures the crowd to “feed your head” in her acid-drenched rendition of “White Rabbit.” With all the attention focused on the anniversary of Woodstock, there has been a renewal of interest in the whole countercultural movement of the 1960s. How did women fit into this movement? Where did they come from? What did they experience? And was there any lasting effect from their involvement? These are all questions that Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Professor of History at St. Mary’s College of California tries to address.

It’s easy to think in stereotypes: the sexually-uninhibited, wide-eyed “hippie chick;” the earth mother; the guitar-strumming, sandal-wearing protestor. Professor Lemke-Santangelo gives us the reality based on meticulous research and interviews. For the most part, the women of the counterculture came from middle and upper class families. They joined the counterculture to escape from social strictures and expectations and in search of richer life experiences. The book’s in-depth interviews provide the reader with an opportunity to understand the appeal of sex and psychedelic drugs for these women in their journey to self-knowledge.

One of the interesting discoveries that she reveals is that, notwithstanding the exploratory dynamics of the Aquarian Age, many communes consigned women to traditional roles such as cooking, housekeeping, and raising children. However, as time went on, the women took on the primary responsibility for sustaining the communes. Many of these women explored various religions and philosophies, developing a new, feminist-centered spirituality. Professor Lemke-Santangelo traces many of the manifestations of contemporary New Age culture to these second-wave feminists. Although this book is primarily intended for a scholarly audience, it is definitely worth reading if you want to truly understand these pioneering and brave daughters of Aquarius.

What special resources are available to inmate patrons and/or prison librarians?

We posed this question to Glennor Shirley, Library Coordinator for the Correctional Education Libraries in Maryland. Her answer was:

Detention Centers house prisoners with short sentences and are run by the local government, sometimes in collaboration with local public libraries.

Prisons are run by the state government and house inmates with sentences ranging from 2 years to life. Prison libraries try to model public library services and aim to meet the informational, educational, popular reading, and lifelong learning needs of the inmates.

They strive to develop a core collection of reference and popular reading materials, but resources may vary depending on funding and commitment of the prison administration.

Inmates in maximum security prisons want sentence reduction so information needs center around legal resources. The libraries have legal databases and core legal collections to meet the constitutional mandate of “access to the court.” In medium, minimum, and pre release prisons, libraries have fewer legal resources and a wider range of materials to help the inmate for a successful transition back to society.

Special collections include, legal resources, books on the trade, career information, family relations, anger management, how to write resume and cover letters, interview for jobs, and lots of directories. Directory information includes access to legal help, homeless shelters, county resources, drug addiction centers , food stamps, government funding, health providers, family counseling centers, where and how to get GED. In the women’s prisons, women are interested in regaining custody of their children so there is information on Family Law, custody, and visitation issues.

Some colleges offer post secondary courses in some prisons. The library will collaborate with the instructors who provide special materials for the course, by stocking and shelving the materials. Prison Librarians may work with the state or county law libraries to obtain photocopies or materials that are housed in the law libraries but would be too costly for the prison libraries to purchase. They also make use of the resources of the State Library Resource Center for training, interlibrary loan, and photocopies.

A great resource for potential prison librarians is Library Services to the Incarcerated: Applying the Public Library Model in Correctional Facility Libraries by Sheila Clark and Erica MacCreaigh. Libraries Unlimited, 2006.

To learn more about prison libraries, Glennor Shirley has a blog called Prison Librarian.