Reviewing Resources Assignment: Booklist Online (Essay Sample)

Reviewing Resources
Name
Institution
Reviewing Resources
Librarians play a crucial role in any institution of learning. They have a responsibility of maintaining collections that meet the needs of their target audience (Johnson, 2009). This can be a daunting task. With reviewing resources, however, librarians can easily decide the materials to purchase and stock. Reviewing resources enable libraries to make informed and unbiased decisions about new materials, evaluate the materials they select, and to keep libraries up-to-date. More interestingly, with technological advancements, librarians now have a wide range of reviewing resources at their disposal to support them in their decision making processes. This paper evaluates and compares the suitability of four reviewing resources for use by librarians: Booklist Online, Common Sense Media, ARBAonline, and Library Journal. The evaluation particularly focuses on the organisation of the resources, their intended audience, their special features, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.
Booklist Online. Retrieved from
Published by the American Library Association (ALA), Booklist is one of the most popular reviewing resources. The resource started as a magazine over 100 years ago, but today includes a web version. It comprises two print magazines, a website, webinars, e-newsletters, online articles, and other resources that support librarians, students, and readers select what to read, view, or listen to (Booklist Online, 2017). The online version provides free content to non-subscribers. Subscribers get access to more than 170,000 reviews as well as thousands of features every year.
One striking thing about the website is its organisation. Its home page provides the review of the day as well as lists of the top reviews of the week and latest articles. With these features, users of the website can quickly get to know the materials to look out for. Proper organisation is also evident in the way the major sections of the website are arranged. These include Book Reviews, Book Awards, Great Reads, Booklist Reader, Newsletters, Webinars, My Booklist, About Us, and Subscribe/Review. The arrangement and visibility of these sections enable users to easily navigate the website. Whether one wants to get familiar with the organisation, subscribe, or locate reviews, the website is well organised. As per the ‘About Us’ section, the website targets library patrons and students, meaning that it is a valuable resource for librarians and the public at large.
The home page also provides Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest links for users that may want to follow the website on social media. In today’s world, the importance of social media cannot be overemphasised. Social media is not only for social conversations, but also a crucial source of information. This is also true for collection development and management, especially at a time when digital innovations are increasingly revolutionising the field (Johnson, 2009).
The reviews published on the website include adult and youth books covering a broad array of genres. Also, the reviews cover media and references. The Booklist Reader provides a catalogue of books aimed at not only librarians, but also book lovers and recreational readers. Another important aspect of Booklist Online is access to free newsletters and webinars. The webinars are one-hour sessions aimed at discovering trends in the publishing industry and librarianship. They cover a wide variety of topics ranging from educational technology to diversity.
Special features are not as many as one would expect. Rating codes are the mainly evident special features. A star is used to mark outstanding reviews, while an award icon is used to distinguish books that have won an award and those that have not. This is, arguably, not enough. The ratings can be improved by having some sort of popularity rating for each book so as to distinguish excellent books from the rest. In addition, the youth section is not properly organised – reviews in this section are arranged according to grade level and are located under each book’s title. The section can be organised much better by providing links for each grade. All in all, Booklist Online is a useful resource for selecting materials. The reviews on the website are authored by ALA-affiliated individuals, enhancing the reliability of the resource.
Though Booklist Online is fairly well organised, provides easy navigation, and is update daily, there are a number of shortcomings. First, the website features several flashes of advertisements, making it quite irritating. Another limitation is that the youth section does not provide a separate subsection for children’s literature. Instead, all the reviews in this section are clamped together with grade suggestions provided under each title. This makes locating children’s literature quite tedious. Even so, Booklist Online is a recommendable resource for librarians. It provides quality reviews as well as newsletters and webinars that would immensely support librarians in collection development and management.
Common Sense Media. Retrieved from
Common Sense Media is a non-profit online resource aimed at providing parents, teachers, and policymakers with unbiased information about books, films, music, games, apps, and websites intended for children use (Common Sense Media, n.d.). The organisation is driven by the need to impact the social, cognitive, psychological, and physical development of children in a positive manner. As the website notes, kids spend more than 50 hours on screen per week (Common Sense Media, n.d.). This underscores the need for parents, teachers, and policymakers to have a trusted guide to assist them select content that is appropriate for kids. As librarians stock children’s materials, Common Sense Media is a useful resource.
The website is much better organised than Booklist Online. Reviews are organised into New Releases, Movies, TV, Books, Games, Apps, and Websites, making it easy for users to locate the genre or category they want. The ‘Top Picks’ section provides lists of the best movies, TV shows, books, apps, games, and websites. The website also provides guides for the various categories of content. Most importantly, the website provides articles, research, news, and advice to parents, educators, and advocates on a wide variety of topics affecting children such as technology addiction, alcohol and drugs, violence in the media, screen time, news and media literacy, sex and body image, cyber bullying, as well as internet and privacy.
The home page also provides comprehensive information about the organisation and its mission, its programs, and membership procedures. There are also links to social media. In fact, Common Sense Media offers more social media links than Booklist Online. It offers not only Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, but also Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+. This could mean that Common Sense Media casts its nets much wider.
Dissimilar to Booklist Online, Common Sense Media predominantly provides reviews and articles relating to children’s content. The content covers a broad range of genres including fiction, non-fiction, and educational materials. Also, the website provides not only book reviews, but also movie, TV, games, apps, and websites reviews. This makes the website quite unique from most reviewing resources. The uniqueness of the website further stems from its target audience. Unlike Booklist Online, which mainly targets book lovers, Common Sense Media targets parents, teachers, and policymakers. Though the website does not mainly target librarians, librarians can benefit enormously from the reviews it provides.
Rating codes are the main special features evident in the website. There are three types of ratings. The first type is age rating, which indicates the age range appropriate for a given content. The second type is colour rating. In this type of rating, three colour schemes (red, orange and green) are used to indicate content appropriateness. For example, red means that content is not appropriate, while green means that content is appropriate. The third type of rating is star rating. This basically involves rating content based on a five-star scale, whereby one star represents the worst and five stars represent the best. One thing about the star rating is that rationale for the rating is also provided, making users make even more informed decisions.
Unlike Booklist Online and many other subscription-based reviewing resources, Common Sense Media is a free resource. This is one of the major advantages of the resource, especially for consumers that may not be able to afford subscription-based resources. Further, the resource provides a pool of unbiased, informative reviews and articles aimed at supporting positive youth development. Another plus for the website is that it does not have ads. While the website may not be the ultimate source of information for evaluating library materials, it provides a starting point for further research. Librarians can carry out additional research to confirm the credibility and reliability of the reviews on the website.
ARBAonline. Retrieved from /arba.aspx
ARBAonline is another subscription-based reviewing resource. In existence for more than 30 years, the resource provides a comprehensive print and online database of more than 19,000 reviews for use by librarians and information science professionals (ARBAonline, 2009). Authored by librarians, the reviews covers reference works published since 1997. The works stretch across 500 subject areas. The website is updated monthly.
Compared to Booklist Online and Common Sense Media, ARBAonline is less organised. The website’s home page mainly provides information about the organisation and its contacts, frequently asked ...