SLIS Site Index

Programs

MLIS
Executive MLIS
Teacher Librarianship
MARA
San José Gateway Ph.D.

Courses

Schedules
Course Pages
Course Descriptions
Course Rotations
eBookstore
Textbooks by Semester
Spring 2009
Fall 2008
Summer 2008
Internships
Special Studies
Specializations
Culminating (LIBR289)

Home - Course Web Pages - Fall 2007 - LIBR 220-02 Greensheet

LIBR 220-02
Resources and Information Services in Professions and Disciplines
Topic: Reader’s Advisory Genres and Techniques
Fall 2007 Greensheet

Joni Richards Bodart
E-mail
Phone: (408)924-2728
Web Site: thebooktalker.com

Greensheet Links
Textbooks
Course Requirements
Course Outline		 Resources
Blackboard
Blackboard Tutorials
SLIS eBookstore

Students will be able to self-enroll in the Blackboard course site starting August 16-24, 2007. You will need an access code which will be sent to all registered students on August 9, 2007 via MySJSU. If you were not enrolled on that date, you must contact me for the code.

Course Description

This course will focus on the philosophy and methodology of matching patrons to genres and authors, locating elusive or nameless books, and organizing and highlighting the adult fiction collection to enable patrons to easily and effectively locate the materials they are seeking. This course also provides the student with an opportunity to focus on the literature of genre fiction, including specific genres and subgenres, specific titles and authors within them, and the characteristics of the readers of each of the genres.

Course Objectives

At the completion of this course, the student will be able to:

In addition, this course fulfills the following SLIS core competencies:

Textbooks

Required

Recommended

Please note that the SLIS eBookstore has used copies of all four texts.

Top of Page

Course Requirements

Office Hours
By appointment only, in Clark Hall, 418H. You may also ask questions via email or on the BB discussion board. I will answer email on a daily basis or as quickly as I can. I will also be posting to the FAQs section of the discussion board when questions are asked that are of interest to the whole class.

If you need to speak to me by phone, I will do all I can to be available to you, but scheduling that call in advance to make it convenient for both of us, and ensure that I have enough time cleared to respond to your questions or problems.

Required Face to Face Class Meetings
There will be four days of f2f meetings. All are required, and will be from 10:00-4:00, with a hour and fifteen minute break for lunch. All days will be extremely full, as you will see below, so come prepared to take lots of notes. This is also why it’s essential that you be on time in the morning and when returning from breaks and lunch. The agenda for those classes will be:

The Blackboard Site
Please check the site regularly for announcements, discussion board questions, and so on. As soon as you sign up on BB, go to the discussion board and introduce yourself, both professionally and personally. Explore the various forums for other information I think might be helpful to you. More will be added as we go along. You also need to take a look at the Course Documents section for articles, bibliographies, and other materials. Assignment due dates are also posted there, as well as below. You will be submitting all your assignments via Assignment Manager. Do NOT use the digital dropbox. Anything left there will be discarded unread.

Please let me know right away if you have problems with anything.

Elluminate Sessions
I have scheduled four Elluminate sessions. They are all required, however, you can miss one without impacting your grade IF you let me know ahead of time that you have a conflict. You are also welcome to suggest discussion topics for Esessions. These sessions will be taped, so if you are not able to participate, you can watch it later. However, if you aren’t there, you can’t add to the discussion, and give the rest of the class a chance to hear your pearls of wisdom. And we all have pearls now and again! The first session will be an introduction to the class and a discussion about titles to use in your book discussion demos at the f2f. The second session will be on best resources for RA—what I recommend, and what you have found useful. The third session will be on programming for RA. The last session will be a chance for you to do your booktalks. All sessions will include time for you to share your favorite reads with the rest of the class, and of course, Q&A.

Class Requirements
PLEASE NOTE: All assignments are designed to help you gain knowledge that will allow you to achieve competency in one or more of the competencies listed above. They are not busy work, and I have designed them carefully to give you both knowledge and skills that will help you succeed as a reader’s advisor. If you don’t understand how a particular assignment will help you do this, please ask me. I will be happy to explain.

You will need to post assignments 2-5 on the appropriate forums on BB to share with your classmates.

  1. a. CLASS PARTICIPATION
    Read textbooks, attend the f2f meetings, and participate in class discussions on discussion boards. Participate is defined as posting 2-3 times weekly, both in response to the questions I post and to others’ reactions to them. Comments should be thoughtful and insightful, adding to our mutual learning process. Questions will be posted on a biweekly basis. Class participation also involves being present for the f2f sessions, being an active group member, and contributing to your group’s class presentation. Group members will also be required to do a self and peer evaluation as part of their participation grade. This evaluation will be in the form of an informal paper. The peer evaluation will be no more than one page, (and can be much shorter) describing how the group came together, who did what, and how well or how poorly your process worked. The self evaluation will include your thoughts about RA services and genre fiction. How has your participation in this class affected your thinking and perceptions? What is your philosophy of RA work, and how do you think you will express it in the future? (No more than two pages, please)

    b. PARTICIPATE IN FICTION_L
    Subscribe to and participate in Fiction-L, an RA listserv. Participation is defined as responding to all posts in which you are interested, and initiating queries of your own. Please note that your responses to posts may be in answer to questions about titles, or may be in response to discussions on the list. You are also welcome to start discussion topics--many students subscribe to this list, and you don't need to feel hesitant about contributing. I am a member of this list, so I will be able to see your participation. You will need to post about once a month, and more if you choose to. To subscribe, go to the following URL, http://www.webrary.org/mgpl/rsdesk.html, click on the hyperlink for Fiction-L, and follow directions. I recommend the digest version, rather than receiving individual posts--the volume is high. However, when responding to the digest version, you will need to change the subject line to reflect the topic of your post, rather than the number of the digest. (While you're there, explore this super site!)

  2. DATABASE OF TITLES
    Read the five required titles for the discussion demos and at least 20 other titles, covering most of the genres. If you are familiar with one of the genres, and have read deeply in it, you might want to not include it in your database, to give you a chance to read in the genres you are not familiar with. Set up a file or spreadsheet of the books you read, with each title evaluated and annotated. Information should include bibliographic information, a “flash talk” or reader’s annotation, a summary and evaluation of the book, the genre and subgenre to which it belongs, and any other information you consider relevant, including readalikes. The goal of this database is to give you enough information to recall the book quickly and recommend it effectively. The style and format are up to you, but it needs to be a database program that we can all open and use. You can also do it as a Word doc, but you won’t be able to search it as easily.

  3. SITE EVALUATIONS
    Before the f2f, visit three libraries and evaluate the RA area and service, including staff, resources, displays, and effectiveness. More details on this will be given during the first Elluminate session. Write an informal, but detailed, paper describing your experiences and rating the libraries on a five point scale, with five as “couldn’t have been better” and one as “I won’t be back.” You should spend 30-45 minutes in each library. If there is more than one librarian on duty, try to talk to all of them, if possible. If one doesn’t answer your question completely, you may ask another librarian the same question, or go on to another topic. Be prepared to discuss your experiences and how they could have been different during our f2f. Look at what articles and your texts say about an RA interview/exchange, and compare that to your experiences.

  4. BOOK DISCUSSION DEMO
    With one other student, lead a 30 minute book discussion during the last day of f2f class on one of the five required titles. We will decide on the titles and who you will work with during the first Elluminate session. You will want to have some questions and suggestions to get the discussion going. You will have time to work with your partner during one of the first days of the f2fs as well as via email before it. You will need to turn in the list of questions you used in the book discussion, a description of how this title would be a part of an ongoing book discussion series, and information on how you promote this series and to whom. Examples of flyers, booklists, bibliographies, bookmarks, PR materials, displays and so on can also be included. You do NOT have to read all the titles you include in them.

  5. BOOKTALKS
    Write booktalks on two titles in your database you would especially like to recommend, and present them at the last Elluminate session. Please note that you do NOT have to “perform” them, just be able to read them aloud smoothly. These should be posted to BB as well as turned in to me.

  6. BOOKMARKS
    Using print and online resources, including your Genreflecting textbook and websites for fans of specific genres, create annotated lists (think bookmark format) of 5-10 items each for three genres, two of which must be ones with which you are not familiar. Include a list of the print and online resources you used to find titles, and indicate in some way which ones you liked best, such as prioritizing them. You do NOT have to read these titles, but you do need to verify that they are high quality and representative of the genre, based on the resources you consulted. You will need to post these on BB to share with the rest of the class. You do NOT have to format these lists into a bookmark, but are welcome to do so if you choose to. It is a relatively easy process using Office Publisher and the Brochures template.

Grading and Evaluation
All assignments will be due at noon on December 10. With permission, you may turn in assignments as late as noon on December 17, but that’s all the flexibility I can give you. If you want to turn in any assignments earlier, you are of course, welcome to do so. If everyone, or at least a majority, feels that I should set earlier due dates for some assignments, I will be happy to work with you to do so.

Database 20%
Book Discussion Demo 20%
Site evaluations 20%
Booktalks 10%
Bookmarks 20%
Participation 10%

Grading Scale
The standard SJSU SLIS Grading Scale is utilized for all SLIS courses:

97-100 A
94-96 A-
91-93 B+
88-90 B
85-87 B-
82-84 C+
79-81 C
76-78 C-
73-75 D+
70-72 D
67-69 D-
Below 67 F

In order to provide consistent guidelines for assessment for graduate level work in the School, these terms are applied to letter grades:

Students are advised that it is their responsibility to maintain a Grade Point Average (GPA) of 3.0.

Academic Integrity
Your own commitment to learning, as evidenced by your enrollment at San José State University, and the University's Academic Integrity Policy requires you to be honest in all your academic course work. Faculty members are required to report all infractions to the Office of Student Conduct and Ethical Development. The policy on academic integrity can be found at http://www.sjsu.edu/senate/S07-2.htm.

Reasonable Accommodation of Disabilities
If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability, please e-mail me as soon as possible. Presidential Directive 97-03 requires that students with disabilities register with the Disability Resource Center (DRC) to establish record of their disability.

No matter where students reside, they should contact the SJSU DRC to register. The DRC Web site: http://www.drc.sjsu.edu/

Top of Page

Course Outline

Top of Page

| Blogs | Calendar | Databases | eBookstore | News (RSS) | PhD | Second Life |