- Hello, my name's Jay.
I'm a Library Service Associate
at the Brown County Library.
Today, I wanna show you NoveList.
Have you ever wondered what to read next,
what's the next book in the series,
or just wanted a suggestion
for a title that was appealing to you?
NoveList is an excellent
tool for helping you decide
what you want to read next.
It will help you find out what book
is the next one in the series.
It will help you find
titles that are similar
to ones that you've already decided
that you liked, and best of all,
it's available to library users for free.
So, let's take a look at how it works,
what we can do with it,
and maybe have some fun along the way.
To begin, I've opened up a
web browser on my computer,
and I have gone to browncountylibrary.org.
Once the page has loaded,
I can mouse over Books, Movies, & Music,
and I can move that down to NoveList,
and I can click on that.
At the top of the page, I'm
greeted by a search bar.
Here, I can type in a keyword,
a title, an author, or a series,
and for the moment, I'm
going to scroll down.
I can click on the image
below Browse Genres,
and I can start pretty broad with fiction,
or I can start to scroll down,
and look at some of the other categories.
So, that's one way that
you can use NoveList,
but perhaps the coolest
way to use NoveList
is using this keyword
search engine up top.
So, if there's a book
that I'm really looking
forward to reading,
or a book that I think I'm going to like,
and I want to find out more about it,
I can type in the title, and click Search.
And I'm looking for the
May, 2020 "Guest List,"
written by Lucy Foley,
so I will click on that.
Now, it's a relatively new book,
so if I were to place a hold on it,
there's a good chance that I might be
waiting for a little while,
but if I'm in the mood to
read something like this book,
I will get several Read-alikes
that show up on the
right side of the page.
So, I can see covers for some
of the Read-alikes on the right.
I can also click View All.
When I do that, it leaves the description
of the item on the page,
and then it shows me Read-alikes,
where it lists the title,
the author, and the reason.
Let's go back a couple pages,
and take a look at another
really interesting feature.
The last thing I wanna
look at before we move
to teen and children's literature
is this Browse By button up here.
I can browse by appeal.
So, this will let me look for
a book that appeals to me,
or at least to what I want right now.
I can select from several
different categories
what type of book I'm in the mood for.
So, I will pick one that is fast-paced,
action-packed, and darkly humorous,
and you can see that NoveList will give me
a choice of 105 titles.
I can click View All,
and then I can scroll through this list,
and see if there's anything
on here that appeals to me.
When I find something that does,
I can click on it,
and then I get Read-alikes for it.
So, if this one doesn't
quite fit the bill,
or if it's one that I've already read,
I can find something similar.
Also, if I happen to
find a series of books,
which I did in this case,
I can click on the series name
right next to it, "Nightside" series,
and this will load up the entire series
from beginning to end.
Now let's take a look at
how we can use NoveList
to find materials for a younger audience.
Let's start with ages zero to eight,
and I will click on "Accordionly."
And here, along with our normal
Read-alikes to the right,
we'll also see a few new things.
For instance, there is a
minimum and maximum grade level,
which will basically tell us
the target audience for the book.
I can also see themes.
In this case, those themes include
grandparents and me,
immigrant experiences,
and music makers.
And I will get reviews from places
like "School Library
Journal," and "Booklist."
If I click on Ages 9-12,
I will get chapter books,
and I will click on "The
Fantastic Library Rescue."
So, again, I get a
description, I see Read-alikes.
In addition to the minimum
and maximum grade levels
that we saw when we were
looking at picture books,
it also includes the Lexile level,
and sometimes schools require
students to read books
that are at a certain Lexile level.
NoveList is a great place to
look for that information.
There's also a section
for teen literature,
and this is where I'll find
the young adult materials.
I will click on one,
and you'll notice again that
there are the Read-alikes.
It gives us a description,
talks about the character, the genre,
and the type of story.
You'll also see a Lexile level again,
and the min max grade
level, and at this point,
I just wanna point out
that that doesn't mean
a sixth-grader is the youngest person
who should read this book.
Neither does it mean that an eighth-grader
is the oldest person that
should read this book.
It's just really talking about
those are the demographics
that the book seems to target.
Up until now, I've
danced around the topic,
but I haven't exactly pointed out
NoveList's most useful feature,
and that's to find books
that I'm going to like in the future.
So, I do that by knowing
what types of books I've
read in the past and enjoyed.
So, I really liked the
book "Fahrenheit 451,"
and I will click Search,
and I will click on that.
Now, here is where these
Read-alikes come into play.
I can click View All,
and I can see the titles
and the reasons again.
Just to confirm that
this works pretty well,
I see on this list "1984,"
which is also a bit of a dystopian future,
and strikes a lot of the same
chords as "Fahrenheit 451."
It still has aspects of
that that appeal to me,
so these Read-alikes are pretty good.
And there you have it.
NoveList is fun, easy to use,
and it will help you discover
some of your future favorite books.
Until next time, my name's Jay
from the Brown County
Library, keep reading.
