Summer Scares Resources

Click here to immediately access the Summer Scares Resource page so that you can add some professionally vetted horror titles into your reading suggestions and fiction collections for all age levels.

Sunday, October 21, 2018

31 Days of Horror: Day 21- A Brief History of Gothic Horror via NYPL and More For You To Use To Help Your Patrons

Today I want to share with you a wonderful article with an annotated book list via the NYPL blog-- A  Brief History of Gothic Horror.

This is an example of serving your patrons all year long. Yes this article and annotated book list was published in October with the idea of capturing the largest possible audience, but, they also tagged it "horror," so that people could access it, and dozens of other lists about horror, from this year and year's past, with one simple click here, anytime.

Now, I know my readers, and the first thing many of you are going to say is something along the lines of:
"But Becky, I work at a tiny library and I don't have the resources [either money or staff] to create this level of content about anything; I am barely treading water as it is."
And to all of you I say:
"This is exactly why I posted these links. You don't have to do the work yourself in order to help your patrons. As I say in Rule 7 of Becky 10 Rules of Basic RA Service-- Use Resources. They are there to make your job easier; give you less you have to do on your own."
[side note: yes, I know I am talking to myself, but I will do anything to get you all to stop making excuses as to why you aren't helping your horror readers]

Don't tell me you don't have the staff like NYPL to put out this material. Who cares? Use theirs. It's what we do. Our profession is know for it. As my friend Steve Thomas of Circulating Ideas likes to say, Librarians don't know the answers to everything, we just know where to find them.

Well my friends, the answers to your lack of horror lists and info for your patrons lies in the work of others, others who are freely sharing it for all comers, like NYPL, like me. Now go forth and help some horror readers. Right now. No more excuses allowed.

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