Finding diversity in the library with Novelist - searching for books about disability for teens

Recently a colleague recommended me to an awesome webinar ran by the folk at NoveList Plus focusing on some great tips and tricks to help with children's and youth readers advisory queries.  ("Finding read-alikes", n.d.).   

It is super important for younger readers to find something that represents themselves in the books they read. Today I wanted to talk about how to find CYA books on the NoveList Plus database that have ability-diverse characters to show as an example of what I learnt. 

What did I learn?

Keywords are easy to use in NoveList and are a good place to start searching. After doing a keyword search (for example, 'invisible disibilities') you can select different limiters on the left side of the webpage like the audience age (teen, ages 9-12, ages 0-8). 

Also after you perform the keyword search the sidebar limiters then become relevant to that search - for example, after my keyword search, the 'character' limiter on the sidebar changed to include further relevant limiters like 'culturally diverse' or 'ability diverse' that could be selected to narrow results. 

The webinar also discussed Novelist's newer feature of 'theme' limiters, for example, from the 'invisible disabilities' keyword search I could then select themes from the sidebar that narrowed book search results that had themes like 'living with invisible disability' or 'living with visible disability' or 'dealing with bullies' or others.  

On the homepage there is also an 'I am in the mood for' book browsing suggestions area. By selecting, say, 'teen' there are tabs you can then select to browse titles that fit into a certain sub-genre or style and then browse the covers like a physical collection.  One of the tabs that can be selected is 'ability-diverse and character driven' that could help the reader pick titles they may like if they just have no idea where to start. 

Title read-alikes:  If your reader is after books similar to something they have already read then search for that title. There is a 'title read-alikes' link found just after the book's heading which will pull up a list of recommended books Novelist has somehow linked as a read-alike.  This is pretty great as a quick printable booklist. 

How was the activity relevant to my professional practice working with children and young adults?

By watching the webinar and then mucking around with Novelist Plus this has helped me feel confident in using the resource specifically for finding books for children and young adults that they want to read.  Practising using this resource more will really develop my readers advisory skills and I feel like I can offer a better service to young readers in knowing how to access more diverse books. It is really important because such books can act as "teaching and coping mechanisms" (Izzo, 2012) for children and youth.

What gaps in my knowledge were revealed and how might I fill those gaps?

Throughout the webinar I realized just how out of practice I was, how little I really knew about using Novelist Plus and how much learning I still need to do with my reader's advisory skills so that I could really serve our young library visitors well.  Novelist Plus offers a whole bunch of web tutorials on their Youtube page (EBSCO NoveList videos, n.d.) that I would like to work my way through so that I can hopefully one day feel like a reader's advisory superhero. 


Reference list

Izzo, C., (2012)., Bordentown librarian helps develop special needs section for library. nj.com. https://www.nj.com/mercer/2012/09/bordentown_librarian_helps_dev.html

Novelist Plus., n.d., https://www.ebscohost.com/novelist/our-products/novelist-plus

Novelist Plus., n.d., Finding read-alikes for younger readers. https://ebsco-australasia.webex.com/ebsco-australasia/lsr.php?RCID=8c8be502673c4ac582fc261c236a1ef5

Youtube., n.d., EBSCO NoveList videos. https://www.youtube.com/user/EBSCONoveList/videos