This week I would like to tell you a little about the review magazines that we librarians read here at the library. These magazines help us pick out what are the new releases that are coming out and the best books to buy for the library. Some of these magazines are published monthly and others are published twice a month. The names of some of them are Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist and Publishers Weekly. For the young audience there is VOYA and School Library Journal. A few of the magazines are available for patrons to check out in the magazine section. The reviews of books are also available online at the publishers’ websites. To find out how some of the books that you are reading are reviewed in the magazines, you can go to MARVEL and on to NoveList Plus as Ann Russell talked about in the blog on November 10, 2012. Ann was using NoveList Plus at the time for series, but the reviews from the magazine are right there below the title and description of the book.
I looked up on NoveList Plus In the Shadow of Blackbirdsby Cat Winters. After finding the right book, I clicked on the title and got more information about this book. Scrolling down the information on this book, you check what libraries have this book by clicking on Search Minerva by title and just below that is a tab that says REVIEWS. For this book it has 3 different reviews, 2 of the magazines gave the book a STARRED REVIEW, which is the best review a book can get from one of these magazines.
So look up the books that you are reading either on the publishers’ websites or on NoveList Plusand see what kind of reviews they are getting or check out one of the review magazines in our collection of magazines. If you see us librarians reading off our computers or out of a magazine, we may be reading reviews to the get the latest and best books for our patrons.
Ginni Nichols, YA Librarian