For decades, if not longer, librarians have reviewed books for professional review journals. Library Journal, School Library Journal, and Choice are among the current publications that rely on volunteers from the library community to evaluate and recommend new books to their peers. Material selection has been the central focus of these reviews, though they have also been helpful in readers' advisory. Finding them has not been difficult, as they are indexed by online periodical indexes and by special publications, like Book Review Digest and Book Review Index. While librarians frequently use these reviews, the public rarely sees them.
Since the advent of the weblog or blog, libraries and librarians have begun publishing their reviews online to help other librarians identify books to recommend to readers and to promote books directly to their readers. MADreads, Newton Reads, Turning the Pages, and We Recommend are just some of the library produced book reviews currently available online. In addition, some independent librarians write their reviews for blogs, such as Pop Goes Fiction, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Library Goddesses, Maggie Reads, and Nonfiction Anonymous. The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County has gone even a bit farther - it collects reviews from its clients for its Reader's Club. Today there is a wealth of library generated book review content, but until recently, there has been no easy or efficient way to find these reviews. Now imagine instantly connecting to these free online reviews written by fellow professionals. The Librarian's Book Revoogle helps you do just that.
I created the Revoogle in minutes using the "Create a Custom Search Engine" page at Google Co-op. I chose the search engine name, described its purpose, assigned some keywords, answered a few basic questions, and, most importantly, identified some websites to search. Creation was easy. Making the search engine truly useful has been the challenging part. The job is not finished.
To date, I have added thirty-eight websites to the search engine's control panel. With most of these I have truncated the URLs (website addresses) in such a way that only the book reviews are searched, excluding pages on library programs, policies, and such. Unfortunately, not all libraries that post reviews have well-organized websites with helpful URLs. As a consequence, search results will at times include some irrelevant links.
Revoogle is a work in progress. I want to add more reviews; and I am always looking for sites to add. You can help. If your library or one you know of posts book reviews, or blogs written by librarians that concentrate on book reviews, please let me know by sending me an email at ricklibrarian@gmail.com. Also email me if you want (1) the code to add the search box to your own webpages or (2) instructions for a Revoogle gadget to add to your iGoogle page.
In the meantime, give Revoogle a try. Accessing the Librarian's Book Review is easy. Go to http://ricklibrarian.googlepages.com/bookrevoogle to find it and a companion search engine called the Librarian's Booklist Search. Search boxes for both are also found in the right hand column of my blog at http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com.
- Named websites:
- MADreads http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/
- Newton Reads http://newtonreads.wordpress.com/
- Turning the Pages http://www2.cincinnatilibrary.org/blog/
- We Recommend http://denverlibrary.org/booksmedia/recommend.cfm?media=Books
- Pop Goes Fiction http://popgoesfiction.blogspot.com/
- Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/
- Library Goddesses http://librarygoddesses.blogspot.com/
- Maggie Reads http://www.maggiereads.blogspot.com/
- Nonfiction Readers Anonymous http://www.nonanon.com/
- Reader's Club http://www.readersclub.org/default.asp
- Google Co-op http://www.google.com/coop/
- iGoogle http://www.google.com/ig?hl=en
Rick Roche Rick Roche is a reference librarian at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library in Western Springs, Illinois. He also sponsors the blog, RickLibrarian, where he reviews books and films and carries on a conversation with fellow librarians. A new feature of this blog is "revoogle", which links users to reviews written by other librarians.