Want Books? - We Bet You Do!

Hi All,

So this is going to be a real library related post - no fluff whatsoever! Completely book related...

Simply put, the library is subscribing to a new databases and will help folks who want to find books. No - the database is not a card catalog. The database will help you browse titles, authors, subject, and more in very easy ways.

Books and Authors (denoted as BaA hereafter) helps patrons browse tens of thousands of books. Before I wrote this blog entry, I used BaA and let me tell you I was downright excited about the various ways patrons can search and find titles.

Some of the ways to search include:
a. title searching

b. author searching

c. genre searching - genres include a separate section for fiction and for non-fiction. Within the fiction genre you can search by Fantasy fiction, Historical fiction, Horror stories, Inspirational fiction, Mystery fiction and more... Within the non-fiction genre you can search by Business, Health/Medicine, Humanities, Science, Social Sciences, Technologies and Biographies.

d. expert picks wherein the user can use a drop down box to find recommended reading lists that were created by librarians and by subject experts - there is are a lot of lists for users to peruse!

e. Award Winners - like Bram Stoker Awards, Caldecott Medal Awards, Edgar Allan Poe Awards, National Book Awards, Pulitzer Prize and much more!

f. Who/What/Where/When searching is available also. Users have to fill in some information for this feature to work but it is very powerful - give it a try! When I chose Computer Expert for the 'Who' part of the search I got 507 results. When I chose Adventure for the 'What' part of the search I got 4483 results. BaA then very nicely combined these two results and came up with 1 titles that had both 'computer expert' and 'adventure'. Even better...I was able to view the 31 titles that had both search criteria. Cool beans!

Another feature of BaA is that users can save titles of books in a list format - which enables the user create his/her own personal Reading Room. Users can also write book reviews and rate books!!!!

BaA has other features, but by and large this blog entry covered the major ways that users can use the database to find books. If you have any questions, just call us at the library - 516-249-9090 and ask for the Reference Desk.

Regards,
Stu