In school we are learning about reader’s advisory right now. Reader’s advisory is a big part of a librarian’s job. Reader’s advisory is when librarians find recommendations for patrons. Patrons frequently look to librarians to find their next read. Patrons tell librarians about a book they read and now they want to know about similar books . A librarian then has to find books based off the information the patron gave them. Of course librarians haven’t read every book in the library’s collection. That would be impossible. So they turn to sites like Goodreads and NoveList Plus. Many libraries offer NoveList Plus for cardholders. If your library is one that does you should be taking advantage of it! Not only does your library pay a lot of money to offer this resource, it is also one of the best resources for finding books.
On NoveList Plus you can enter keywords, authors, book titles, series, or narrator into the search bar. Then the site finds books that fit into that criteria. For example if you put in the search bar “princesses frogs,” the search would return results that include princesses and frogs in the book. If you were to put in an author such as “L.M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery,” it would show you a list of all the titles written by that author.
Other cool features of NoveList Plus include character descriptions, series, storyline, tone, writing style, and genre. My favorite thing about this site though, is the “readalikes” feature. The site offers suggestions on both author readalikes and title readalikes. Author readalikes are a list of authors that have the same style as the one you searched. Title readalikes are a list books that are similar to the one you searched. This is so helpful for reader’s advisory because you are able to take a book a patron liked and offer them a list of suggestions, even if you’ve never read any of the books yourself. It’s also helpful on a personal level. Whenever I finish a really good book I search it on NoveList Plus to see what books are similar. This makes it much easier to find books that I enjoy. Here’s an example of what the page looks like when viewing a book: 
As you can see the author, series, description, genre, character, storyline, tone, and writing style is located under the title. On the right hand side you will see the readalikes list. You can click on view all to see all of the suggestions. You can also see audiobook versions and more information about the book underneath the initial description.
If you are a reader you need to be using NoveList Plus. Many libraries offer it as free resource to cardholders and if you live in the state of Wisconsin you can access the free version of it through BadgerLink. As long as you have a Wisconsin library card you can access it through BadgerLink, even if your library doesn’t offer NoveList as a resource. Please note that I am using NoveList Plus, there is a free version of NoveList that I have never used before. I am very lucky that my library offers NoveList Plus as a resource.
Have you ever heard of NoveList before? Do you use it often?
