The Readers' Advisory Guide To Nonfiction

VOYA

With an obvious passion for her subject, Wyatt crafts an impressively detailed, truly readable guide for effectively using nonfiction within the framework of an entire library collection. Far more than a collection of topical lists or generic readers' advisory (RA) practices, this volume is essentially a complete guide to nonfiction RA. The first chapters orient the reader to the general practice of nonfiction RA and detail strategies for incorporating new skills with existing RA abilities. The middle chapters clearly show how to apply these strategies within significant nonfiction subjects (food and cooking, memoirs, sports, true adventure, etc.) and provide examples of different types of resources available in these subject areas, as well as ways to tie in items from other subject areas and parts of a larger collection. Each subject-oriented chapter includes a well-balanced list of important authors and titles, including a "benchmark" text and read-alike options. A major strength of the text is found in the final sections, where ideas for marketing a nonfiction collection and providing "whole collection" RA are explored. Appendixes offer tools that many librarians will find helpful, including ideas for compiling nonfiction subject guides, locating and using award lists, and a nonfiction reading plan. Part of the publisher's Readers' Advisory Series, this text offers an empowering take on nonfiction RA that is sure to inspire new ways of combining resources from all sections of the collection. Reference and readers' advisory providers in public and academic libraries will find it extremely useful. Reviewer: Elsworth Rockefeller
April 2008 (Vol. 31, No.1)

Library Journal

For librarians hoping to provide readers' advisory (RA) for nonfiction, Wyatt, editor of LJ's The Reader's Shelf column and author of its online Wyatt's World, starts with an overview of the genre's four key characteristics (narrative context, subject, type, and appeal). She then explains how each can be used to match readers with books and how librarians can better familiarize themselves with material in their nonfiction collections. She devotes her middle chapters to highlighting popular nonfiction genres (food and cooking, sports, history, science, etc.) and listing benchmark titles with which librarians should already be aware. Wyatt ends with suggestions on how to market nonfiction collections as well as combine them with traditional fiction RA, concluding with step-by-step instructions for creating read-arounds and reading maps. Wyatt makes excellent use of examples to explain her points, and the appendixes on building nonfiction subject guides, a nonfiction reading plan for librarians, and a sample annotation form leave librarians with plenty of guidance for starting to implement her suggestions. Recommended for public libraries.

The librarian memoir breaks its dull-as-dishwater stereotype with Don Borchert's wry Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library(see review on p. 65).
—Julie Elliott