Biblio File

Introducing NoveList

Sometimes you know what you want to read—everyone is reading it and talking about it, or it’s your book club assignment, or it’s the sequel of the last book you loved. But sometimes you want to look around and be surprised by something new.

We’ve added a new service to our suite of recommendation tools: NoveList, an interactive database that specializes in readers’ advisory. NoveList employs 80 full-time librarians who put their own personal knowledge into book recommendations.

So how do you use it?

Search for a book—let’s use Gone Girl—in our catalog.

Scroll down to the “NoveList Recommendations” section...

… and find more titles you might like. Hover over “Why this match?” to find out why NoveList picked that particular book.

Keep scrolling for another nice facet of NoveList: appeal terms, genre, and subject terms.

Appeal terms help readers cut across genres. Romances can be just as suspenseful as thrillers; fantasy titles can be just as beautifully written as literary fiction. You may love a mystery, but not because it is a mystery; you love it because of its atmosphere and converging plot lines.

In NoveList, these appeal terms are linked—so, if you like a book because it is “quirky” or “witty,” you can select the term and find other titles are similarly tagged. We often find ourselves using it to answer readers’ advisory questions.

NoveList also has a feature designed for series readers, who like to stay with characters over many books. NoveList provides the order of a particular series and suggests similar series in addition to stand-alone titles.

Sometimes, the thrill of the chase—the act of finding a book you didn’t even know existed—is the best part. We hope you’ll enjoy using NoveList.  —The Readers Services Department

Comments

Patron-generated content represents the views and interpretations of the patron, not necessarily those of The New York Public Library. For more information see NYPL's Website Terms and Conditions.

Instead of adding all these

Instead of adding all these new features that no one was really wanting.. how about brining back the old working site where one could manage lists and holds. And it would be great if you had a working app as well. I'm still confused why you took down a perfectly good site and replaced it with this crap.

My Shelves

Where are my shelves?????

Reserving a PC

Why is the option to reserve a pc at one of the libraries not an option listed next to "Browse"? Why is such a commonly desired feature hidden, and not immediately visible on the homepage? Why do I have to go through screen after screen after screen simply to reserve a pc? This new website is obviously geared to people who enjoy having a relationship with their computer screens. What about the rest of us who simply want to get on and get off with as little technical difficulty as possible? "Save" equals "Send"?