Secret Shopper Summary


When looking for a book today, I went to the reference desk and asked the librarian to help me find some books that I would enjoy. First, she asked me what kind of books I liked, I said Romance and Historical Fiction, and she immediately led me to the special boxes of romance the library had specifically curated for Romance month (February).  I looked through those for a while, and then she asked me a few more questions, mostly whether or not I had read certain titles. Through asking those questions, she found me a few more choices. The last few suggestions were brought out after I told her I was curious about popular titles.

Interestingly enough I didn't see her use any tools. It impressed me very much that she came up with so many suggestions off the top of her head. Another thing I was happy to see her do was show me around the fiction section since I mentioned I hadn't been there before.

Overall, I think this was a successful experiment. I left the library with three checked out items, two books she recommended to me by handpick, and one that I found in the romance bin she pointed out to me.

Furthermore, I do not think this experience was completely what I expected because it started off very slowly, with her only asking a couple of questions and going back to the desk. I was not expecting her to pull so many titles, I also wasn’t expecting her to be so thorough in showing me around because it seemed like a busy day.

To conclude, I learned a lot from this activity. I was able to find a few new books to read and learn my way around the library. I found this librarian to be very kind and helpful, and if I needed readers advisory assistance again, I would trust her to help me find more great books.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 11 Prompt

I think that the rise of audiobooks and eBooks, has done a lot to change appeal factors.  I would like to first focus on eBooks, I don’t think not having a physical copy of a book changes much about knowledge of the genre. Some factors I do think can be changed are that an eBook doesn’t have the thickness of a large book, which can often make a book look more intimidating. I do not think changing the font changes pacing or tone all that much. However, if a font is distracting in the way it looks, it might change the pace at which I read a book. Changing the line spacing might make a paragraph look less intimidating. I feel like using a big font might result in feeling like you read a lot faster and might change your reading speed. When it comes to audiobooks on the other hand, I think they have many ways of changing appeal factors. I think this is particularly true when it comes to who is reading the audiobook. For me, I think narrator choice can greatly affect your enjoyment of a ...
Read more

Week 15 Prompt

The three ways I would choose to market my library’s fiction collection are social media, displays, and book clubs. Social Media  For this tool, I would focus on two of the most popular social media platforms right now, Instagram and Tiktok for Instagram, some possible posts include, a staff pick of the week, a monthly theme with five or so books for the theme each month (Theme could be a genre, topic, etc.) and a monthly author spotlight) For Tiktok I’d do an as seen on Booktok video each month, genre spotlight videos, and author spotlight videos. Displays I would use this tool by creating one or two new fiction displays each moth. Some of these would correspond with various history/awareness months (Think pride, black history, etc). Or holiday themes, such as romance for February/Valentine’s Day. Book Clubs Many libraries have book clubs, so this isn’t a fresh idea, but it’s proven to attract people to fiction books. One idea I have for a book theme is New Releases, where each mo...
Read more

Week 7 Prompt

I would say that over the last two years I have allowed my reading choices to be greatly influenced by Reese Witherspoon’s celebrity book club. At first, I thought it was because I’ve probably seen Legally Blonde dozens of times, and follow Reese’s life frequently on socials, but now I know it goes much deeper than that. For starters, I first heard of many of these books Reese Witherspoon selected for her book club because her production company was adapting them for the screen, after googling some of these titles I learned of the book club. I soon noticed that the majority of these books have incredibly well-crafted strong female leads, and when you add this to the fact that Reese frequently speaks out on feminist topics, I started to feel her section and opinions on these books were incredibly trust worthy. Furthermore, the CEO of Reese’s production company, Hello Sunshine, says the following about the heart behind the book club , the heart of a book club hearkens back to groups of w...
Read more