Meg Raymond of the Richmond Public Library (Photo by Jay Paul)
For members of a card-carrying cadre, a highly personalized service will distill the vast reams of world literature to a tailor-made list of recommendations for your next book — or books — to read.
All that’s needed is a Richmond Public Library card.
This “bespoke readers advisory service” is called the Bookologist, and it can help to overcome a reading rut — or just provide a change of pace — thanks to Richmond Collection Development Librarian Meg Raymond.
“My favorite part of being a librarian is pushing books at people,” Raymond says. She helped create the Bookologist program in September 2020 after discovering a similar recommendation service in Oregon’s Multnomah Public Library.
“I sent a gushing fangirl email, and they kindly said, ‘Copy it, adapt it, use it however you want at your library,’ ” Raymond says. “I started with creating a lot of book lists. I polled branch staff to see who liked doing RA [Reader’s Advisory, the formal name for recommending books to library patrons] and would they be willing to be on board with a ‘bespoke’ service. We started offering this as a service for adults but quickly added kids and teens to the mix.”
On the library’s website, you’ll find the Bookologist in the “Books and Media” section. A simple form with prompts such as “Describe your perfect book in 3-5 words,” plus a checklist of descriptive criteria spanning from “science fiction” to “steamy,” guides the suggestions that will be presented to you.
Based on a user’s form, a member of the Bookologist crew best qualified to generate suggestions will build a custom recommendation list and send it by email within three to five days, with titles automatically placed on hold at their preferred branch.
“Public libraries are all about customer service, and this is a way to really stand out from the algorithm-driven, mass-produced, computerized and ad-saturated world,” Raymond says.
