Challenge 7: Dear Reader

Haven't checked out our new Dear Reader features yet? This challenge is your chance to see it all first-hand. Dear Reader does several things for our patrons. If they click on the "What's New" button from the front page, this takes them to the central Dear Reader page. Here we can see all of the services that Dear Reade provides, and in some cases, easy links to have this information sent directly to you whenever it is updated.

The first set of links are the newsletters. Newsletters are updated once a month, and alert patrons to new items in specific genres and formats. Most newsletters include a picture of the book and a written description, to help entice patrons into checking them out. Newsletters can be viewed online, sent to a patron's RSS reader, or sent directly to their inbox by e-mail. All three of these options are available right next to each newsletter's title on the main Dear Reader page. Genres include New and Bestselling Fiction, New and Bestselling Non Fiction, as well as Horror, Romance, Home & Garden, and Christian Fiction. Formats include Large Print, Children's Picturebooks and Chapterbooks, and New Movies. The Movies newsletter is one of our personal newsletters, and is put together entirely by someone on staff. Other custom newsletters that we provide are Graphic Novels, History, Children's Nonfiction, and the Kentucky Standard's New Book List.

Just below the newsletters is the Dear Reader "Authors on the Web" index. Couldn't find your favorite author's website in the last challenge? Try it here. Be careful, though, some of these aren't necessarily the Author's webpage, and fansites may not always be accurate. Other sites for older authors are out of date. That said, as long as you're not looking for a website on Dante Alighieri (greatdante.net hasn't been updated since 2005), you will probably have some luck checking here.

Below that are handy awards and bestsellers lists for both Adults and Youth. Have a patron who will only read Oprah books? How about Sci-fi? Mystery? Need a list of the recent Caldecott Award Winners? These awards lists give them the best of the best in the genre of their choice. The only drawback I see with these is they don't go back very far. Each list shows only the most recent winners, so anyone who is looking for something a bit older will need to go to each individual award's website to find the complete list of winners.

But perhaps one of the handiest features of Dear Reader is their online book clubs, which send patrons small excerpts from a book in a genre of their choice, Monday through Friday. By the end of the week patrons will know whether or not they are interested in coming into the library and checking out the book in order to finish it. This is handy for patrons who would not usually pick up a book by an author they don't already read, allowing them to find new authors while still staying within their preferred genre. Patrons can sign up for as many book clubs as they want by clicking on the "Read Books in Your Email" button at the bottom left hand corner of our website. Each email comes clearly marked with the genre and the section number, to help in case you fall behind and need to get caught up with the week's reading. If you don't like the book they've chosen, just delete the rest of the emails for the week, and try again next week! All this, and you didn't even have to change out of your pajamas. Book clubs come in similar topics as the newsletters, and both the newsletters and book clubs link back to our library website, in order to make it easy for patrons to place holds on items they have seen through Dear Reader.

Your Challenge: Sometime this weekend, sign up for a Dear Reader book club. Just for one week. Tell us what your book was, and how you liked getting a book preview sent directly to your email. Do you want to go out and find your book now? Feel free to unsubscribe after you've completed your task.

Bonus Link: DailyLit is avery similar concept to the Dear Reader book clubs. For older books, DailyLit will e-mail you the entire book, in sections, for free. Have you ever wanted to read War and Peace? DailyLit can send it to you over the course of 663 days. A little less imposing is Oscar Wilde's Picture Of Dorian Gray, which will only take you 96 days. DailyLit also provides this service for newer books, but at a price. DailyLit will send you a few sections as a preview, but readers must pay to continue the book after their preview is over. Prices vary depending on the book.