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Saturday, October 3, 2020

31 Days of Horror: Day 3- This Blog as a Horror Resource

Each year as 31 Days of Horror begins, I like to do a quick tutorial on how to use this site because it is very different from RA for All and I know many of you are regular users of that blog, so some introductions are needed. 

This website is much more of a one-stop shop for horror information geared toward a library audience rather than a daily conversation about RA Service.

As the header says, this blog is the online home of my book. I think of it as the free update to that book. This is very important because the second edition of my book came out in 2012 [it is OLD] but I am currently finishing up the brand new third edition, which will be available in the second half of 2021.

My goal is for this to be THE resource for library workers to help you both develop your horror collections and help readers find a great read. Yes, the blog-a-thon if fun and the content is a little more exciting, but I would argue that the site is even more useful outside of October.

So today, here is a quick tutorial of what you can find here and how you can use it. All pages that are mentioned are always accessible  in the right gutter of the blog under my book cover. 

  • The best place to begin is my Horror Resources page. This is an annotated list of my favorite print and web resources. I have sifted through it all for you and have a collection of both horror specific and general library resources that cover horror well.
  • I  also keep a list of my approved independent horror publishers. These are publishers I think create a product that works well for a general American Public Library collection. They are well edited, produced in a way that will stand up to multiple checkouts, and the content is not too niche. I am very careful about who I add here. Companies that do not pay their authors and or exhibit bad behavior are not added [or are removed immediately if already appearing when these allegations come to light]. I highly encourage you, the library worker, to check out their websites and give the little bit of extra effort it takes to order from these publishers directly. A few have, with my urging, made themselves  available through Ingram and B&T also. 
  • I have an archive of the awards that honor horror. Some are obvious like The Bram Stoker Awards, but, there are more. These are all major award and I encourage you use the lists of finalists as well as winners [current and backlist] as a RA Tool for ordering, suggestions, displays, and more-- as I preach about frequently on the regular blog about all awards lists.
  • I have an archive of all of my original lists, articles, and presentations [some going all the way back to 2005]. They are useful, especially the genre overviews that I have done for Library Journal since 2018 and the last 5 years of my personal "best" reads. 
  • There is also Summer Scares info, both the current year and the archive. I will be posting about this on Halloween in more detail as that  is  the day we will announce the 2021 Spokesperson, but you  can use those resources anytime of year to help readers.
  • There is a page which serves as an index to all of my reviews, accessible by author last name here. I will have a separate post about that tomorrow though.
Remember, you can help horror readers and work on your collections all year long, not just during the Halloween Season.

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