BiblioCommons Presents Library Staff Training with Readers’ Advisor Extraordinaire Nancy Pearl
BiblioCommons Inc. is pleased to present staff training with Nancy Pearl, avid reader and readers’ advisor, and one of the reading culture’s best known librarians. Staff at libraries using the BiblioCore catalog are encouraged to attend the online training on September 24 and 25. The sessions will be recorded and archived video links will be made available to all BiblioCommons libraries for use in ongoing staff training.
BiblioCommons provides a unique platform for public librarians to collaborate and share expertise, recommendations, and staff picks. With the wide variety of tools within BiblioCore, staff can connect with patrons through the catalog and social media and to encourage community discussions around books while never leaving the library’s online experience. Recently, BiblioCommons has enhanced the BiblioCore catalog with greater promotion of staff expertise and specific functionality to feature local library reviews, lists and recommendations prominently throughout each library’s catalog.
“I believe that providing excellent readers’ advisory service is one of the fundamental roles of the public library,” explained Nancy Pearl. “My work has long been about the joy—for librarians and library patrons—of connecting books with readers. Now, with technology, we have even more opportunity to do so. Extending our readers’ advisory skills online is a must.”
With six 30-minute sessions over two days, library staff may register for as many sessions as they wish and explore readers’ advisory tools and techniques in an online environment, followed by an exercise and a Q&A session. Each session will be recorded to use and share after the webinars are completed and are designed to easily fit into staff meetings and mini-trainings. For more information and to register, please visit: https://community.bibliocommons.com/nancypearl.
“We are thrilled to be working with Nancy Pearl and to support library staff in using the tools across the BiblioCore platform to connect with patrons and to share librarians’ vast expertise with their communities,” said Beth Jefferson, Co-Founder of BiblioCommons. “We want to encourage communities to turn to their local library first whenever someone is considering what to read next and to nurture strong connections between libraries and the people they serve—particularly as more patrons visit libraries’ websites rather than walking into the physical buildings.”
Since the release of the best-selling Book Lust in 2003 and the Librarian Action Figure modeled in her likeness, Nancy Pearl has become a rock star among readers. Having worked as a librarian and bookseller in Detroit, Tulsa, and Seattle, Pearl developed the first major city-wide one-book focused reading initiative with the 1998 program “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book.” The former Executive Director of the Washington Center for the Book, Pearl celebrates the written word by speaking at bookstores and libraries across the country and on her monthly television program Book Lust with Nancy Pearl. She is a regular commentator about books on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and NPR affiliate stations in Seattle and Tulsa.