Week 9 assignments

Assignment 1: Read articles and watch book trailers
I read the articles and watched the Packing for Mars video along with several of the ones mentioned in the articles.  I also checked YouTube and watched trailers for The Fault in our Stars by John Green , Room by Emma Donoghue, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben H. Winters.

Assignment 2: My reaction to video book trailers
Well the Chicago Tribune article got this right. I hadn't watched book trailers before and I was surprised by how un-useful they were.  As a reader, I didn't find myself encouraged to read any of the books.  I also didn't find much in them that would help me recommend the titles to other readers.  I know that I would have felt differently if I had read a jacket blurb about any of them.  The videos were light on information and took too long to get started.  I was most surprised by the trailer for The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan.  It wasn't engaging and, to my surprise, you had to watch one of those YouTube commercials before you could watch the trailer.  It seems too much to be required to watch a commercial before watching what is, in essence, another commercial. I thought that the trailers for young adult novels might be more engaging but I didn't have any success there.  The trailer for The Fault in our Stars was just a brief alert the the book existed and featured young children on swings.  Nothing that would make you want to read what I thought was one of the best books I have read this year. The trailer for Room was the same.  It was well composed - much better than the articles would have led me to expect - but it didn't do enough to draw the viewer into what is a very powerful story.  I think that the view becomes too rarefied when you take a story, get someone's 30 second impression of it, and then run that impression through someone's choice of visual interpretation.

I didn't find the author interviews to be particularly helpful in making me want to read a particular book or in giving me info that I could use to recommend it.  They might be useful as a source for discussion information after a group had read a title.  The video for The Glass Castle was interesting but I think it also served as a spoiler of sorts. I was glad that I had read the book in advance so that the story line developed for me as the author intended.

One exception to this that I came upon was the trailer for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.  It had good production quality, captured what (I think is) the tone and style of the book and was a hoot to watch.

Assignment 3: Thoughts on what I learned
Some of the information in this training was not new to me.  I had been exposed to the concepts of appeal characteristics before.  In this case, repetition was very useful.  I found that this series of exercises helped to make me more aware of ways to identify appeal characteristics and more comfortable in discussing books in those terms.  I also enjoyed the chance to read through readers advisory sites like Early Word and Salon. I hadn't spent much time with them before.  I mentioned that I'm a terrible participant in GoodReads and I'm going to try to improve with that.  What I learned from these exercises is that you don't need to be a good participant to be able to use the site as a readers advisory tool. The genre tree Prezi was very useful. I liked the examples and the brief statements that describe the key characteristics in each genre.  It was interesting to see them arranged visually in a genre and subgenre format. The graphic presentation made it easy for me to understand.

For format, I always find self paced training difficult.  As is the case for many others, competing priorities often cause me to put the training aside to handle something more pressing.  I made it though.  Thanks for extending the deadline. As a training program, it is great to have this at the ready for new staff members to experience.  Over many years at BCPL I have seen readers advisory training campaigns come and go. One of the biggest challenges is how to maintain long-term consistent training so that all staff members are exposed to the same opportunities to develop skills. It will be useful to have this program on hand.

Thanks!

Jim