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Monday, October 2, 2017

31 Days of Horror: Day 2-- Overview on How to Use This Blog

I am going to use much of this first week of the blog-a-thon to explain the basics of what you can find here on the site and how to use it to help readers now and all year long.

Most of you are used to reading my daily, more general RA Service posts on the main blog. This blog is much different, yet in many ways, it is more useful in that you can use it to help readers in real time.

It’s been a few years since I have really talked about the purpose and philosophy of this blog and since my readership has gone up quite a bit, I thought now was a good time to do that today.

First and foremost, this book is a companion and update to my latest book-- The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, 2nd edition. So this site is a free update to the book which is now 5.5 years old. The book lists in print are still helpful, especially since all of the reviews I have done since and posted here on the blog also use tags that match with the chapters so you can easily update the lists with newer titles.

Speaking of reviews, that leads to the second point about how to use this blog. Reviews, resources, and original content created by me, most of what you many need to help people is organized and archived into pages. As you can see to the left, there are many pages, but this allows the information you would need to help a patron as they stand in front of you.

While the main blog is a daily site which is all about what is going on in all of RA Service right this moment, the horror blog is more specialized. What kind of information do you need and how you can retrieve it quickly? It is focused on lists and resources, not the issues. That is not to day that I do not address issues here, but they are not the main focus.

Third, this blog is the go-to place for you, the library worker to educate yourself on the horror genre.. It is where you go to keep your collections in shape AND a place to find good under the radar or older reads. You can use it as much to help yourself as you can use it to help your patrons.

This is just a general overview of what you can expect to find on the horror blog and how it will help you. I am taking advantage of your interest in horror this month to showcase what I have here all year long. As this first week of October begins, I will be going into a little more detail about how to use the wealth of information I have gathered and organized here over the years. I know I have your attention right this minute, but I hope that today, and for the full 31 days of October, I can convince you to take horror seriously all year long. Heck may be I’ll even get you to recommend a scary story in May.

Join me on my journey to help you become a horror expert- no matter how you personally feel about the genre- because it is not about you at all, it’s about your readers, and this month, is when you will get the highest number of those want to feel the fear and read a scary book. But, I also am going to keep reminding you that horror is here the other 11 months of the year too.

So keep coming back, every day this month. I’ll be here with something new for you each day.

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