Cindy: Joyce, you recently retired from your public library career as a readers' advisor. I'm not sure "retired" is really the right word, as you are still very active in speaking, writing and teaching in the field. Reminisce for us a bit about your career choices and how you ended up specializing in readers' advisory work.
Joyce: I was lucky—there's no other answer. I interviewed twice at another local library and didn't get the job. Then, I interviewed at Downers Grove and was hired as a reference librarian. During that time I met Nancy Brown, who worked there as a library assistant while in library school. When Kathy Balcom became our new director, I took the job as Head of Technical Services. (I know, I know, but my Master's thesis and advisor were in that field.) Then, when our library was to expand, Kathy asked if I wanted to start up a readers' advisory department. I didn't even know what it was! When I learned, I thought it sounded wonderful. We lured Nancy from a school library, and she and I set up the program.
We got fiction, the Dewey 800s and the audio—a space issue. This was a great match for me. I had degrees in English (and German which only occasionally proved useful) and Comparative Literature, so I was really comfortable with the 800s. I was a big reader, and Nancy could organize anything—so we were off to a good start. We started with Betty Rosenberg's first edition of Genreflecting; used it to create our first Popular Fiction list, which we used to train staff; and we never looked back.
Cindy: You won PLA's Allie Beth Martin Award in 1989. If you think back to those days, how was the atmosphere different from the current climate for readers' advisors?
Joyce: Things were just starting to happen; interest in readers' advisory was growing. The first edition of our book Readers' Advisory Service in the Public Library came out at that conference—and Nancy and I were asked by one of the Allie Beth Martin committee members to do our first out-of-state workshop the next fall as a result of the book and the award. We had already formed the Adult Reading Round Table in 1984. This organization of Chicago-area librarians (now more than 200) provided continuing education for readers' advisors with three programs a year. For our first conference, we flew Betty Rosenberg in from California!
But I wasn't the first librarian to have a readers' advisory department by any means. My friend Vivian Mortensen at Park Ridge, Illinois, had started a successful department before ours, and there were undoubtedly others around the country, not to mention the hundreds of librarians providing excellent readers' advisory without even knowing they were performing this service. They were simply talking about books with interested readers.
This was the time when librarians valued information far more than leisure reading, and to many of our colleagues what we were doing wasn't important. In the 90s the climate changed dramatically, with readers' advisory becoming more and more important in a lot of libraries and certainly at conferences.
Cindy: Would you share with us one of your most rewarding experiences as a readers' advisor?
Joyce: That's really hard. My first thought is that the connections I've made with other readers' advisors top the list. People involved in RA tend to be bright, interesting, people-people. They're intuitive and inquisitive. Dinner conversation can never be dull with a table full of readers' advisors!
It's also rewarding—but terrifying—to realize that some of my daily interactions with readers have had a profound effect. We don't realize it while it's happening—we're just talking with readers, often anonymous, as we do every day. They come back later to tell us that we made a difference. It's very intimidating to think that every interaction can be important, can make a huge difference to the person we're dealing with. I know this isn't just with readers' advisory but with all public service, but the connection we make with readers over the kinds of books they enjoy reading seems to make the bond more intimate. Seeing readers' advisory service blossom, blooming wherever given a chance across the country, has also been rewarding. It's as if we've opened the floodgates and all this pent-up enthusiasm is flowing forth, with readers enthusiastically sharing books with other readers. It's wonderful to be a part of all this!
Cindy: Did you learn about RA service in library school?
Joyce: At the University of Chicago? Are you kidding? I had some wonderful professors—Peggy Sullivan, Pat Swanson, Zena Sutherland—but the only class in which I read popular books and fiction was Young Adult literature. After we started the department in 1983, I begged my director every year to send me out to California for the semester to take Betty Rosenberg's class, but it never happened. It's exciting to see Readers' Advisory being taught in so many library schools now. Not just part of the Public Libraries course, but as a real course. It's a great way to prepare students for life on a public service desk!
Cindy: You teach, speak and travel extensively—what can you tell us about the new crop of readers' advisors?
Joyce: Watch out! They are incredible—they read, they blog, they've mastered computers in ways that I can only marvel at. They have a lot to offer and a lot to learn, just as we did. I love teaching because each class soaks up information and then spins it differently. It's very exciting. Many of them don't see that conflict between information and leisure reading, and they're happy to offer it all. They're also perhaps more comfortable using computer resources and sharing them with readers. Those of us who started doing readers' advisory with almost no resources often don't use them as comfortably.
They're taking what we've built and moving beyond. Quickly. I think it's safe for us to step down, because the next generation of librarians will make certain that readers' advisory isn't just a flash in the pan. I think it's become a more accepted aspect of the service we provide, and I don't think either readers' advisory service or physical books will disappear anytime soon.
Cindy: What do you see as the future of RA service? Will mystery readers still be coming to the library 30 years from now?
Joyce: Why not? As long as libraries remain providers of free books and materials, we'll always be advising our patrons. I expect that we'll be doing more and more through the Internet. I know I put more reserves on when the library isn't open than when it is! We'll need to figure out ways to use the Web better to market and offer our services—more displays, more annotated lists, more ways to make it easy for readers/viewers to find what they want.
Obviously, working with nonfiction is part of our near future. I'm currently co-leading a two-year nonfiction study—and it's overwhelming. There are so many great books out there to share with readers. It's really exciting!
And why we aren't doing more with audio and video is a mystery to me. We'll be seeing more fiction/nonfiction displays as well as multi-format ones.
Cindy: If you had one piece of advice for a beginning readers' advisor, what would it be?
Joyce: Don't forget to have fun. Readers'advisory can be really intimidating—we'll never read enough, there often isn't a source to consult when working with a reader, readers will ask about authors and titles and genres we've never heard about. Readers' advisory is one big puzzle, a treasure hunt. Who are the popular authors, what makes them popular, what else might readers/viewers enjoy?
There are lots of questions to answer and lots of ways to answer them. The search satisfies us intellectually, but the interactions provide other satisfactions as well. Sharing books with readers, sharing ideas and problems with colleagues, exploring and discovering new answers as well as new questions—all these offer pleasure for us and the readers we assist. Sure, it's hard work, but readers' advisory service is fun too. Or it certainly should be!
Cindy: Why is readers' advisory work important to libraries?
Joyce: Aha—a chance to get up on my soapbox! At a time when patrons are turning in droves to other sources for factual information, we in libraries have to be committed to providing the best customer service possible. And that's exactly what readers' advisory is about—it's starting conversations with readers, making connections, and answering questions that may be informational but may also be as nebulous as helping them find a book they're in the mood to read. Readers' advisory service is good customer service; our patrons see that we care about their library experience. We set up an open atmosphere where readers become comfortable asking any and all questions. They begin to see the library as a personal resource, preferable to an impersonal computer. RA guru Duncan Smith talks about the fact that public libraries answer the questions that matter, that make a difference in the lives of our patrons. We don't just answer informational questions, but we help them find materials of all kinds that help them understand or escape their world and situation.
RA is also about networking—not only do we talk with readers but we also talk with staff members and colleagues. Those networks give us a wider range of titles to share with readers, and the connections we make strengthen relationships within and outside the library.
I believe that providing excellent customer service is probably the most important priority for libraries and that readers' advisory reinforces the best customer services practices. You don't have to have a readers' advisory department to provide readers' advisory service; you simply need to understand the necessity of meeting the reader where he is—suggestions go from the reader to book ideas, not vice versa—and an enthusiasm for sharing books of all kinds for all interests.
Cindy: We can't end without asking the traditional question that all of us ask each other every day. What are you reading now? Is there such a thing as a "winter read?"
Joyce: Perhaps there's a retirement read! I'm finally tackling Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg [The Magic Mountain], almost 1000 pages—a little bit everyday. But I do love Mann—what gorgeous prose! And somehow in retirement I feel I ought to have more time—to reread, to continue in favorite series, to read more nonfiction, to explore in many directions—and I wonder why I haven't quite found that elusive extra hour or two in my day.
Cindy: Thank you so much for sharing your perspective with us. You truly are an inspiration to readers' advisors everywhere.
Cynthia Orr
is the Collection Manager at Cleveland Public Library in Ohio. She teaches Readers' Advisory Service classes and workshops for Kent State University's Graduate School of Library and Information Science, writes Read-Alike columns for NoveList, is a member of the PLA Readers' Advisory Committee, and of the Advisory Board for the Reader's Advisor Online, forthcoming from Libraries Unlimited in Spring 2006.