RA Secret Shopper Summary

My experience with the library that I went too was a little disappointing because I feel like I wasn’t listened to by Andrew while we worked to together to find a book I would enjoy. He did attempt to ask me questions about my preferences when it came to reading fantasy, like if I saw The Hobbit or I enjoyed watching Game of Thrones. I told him my preference was for Game of Thrones and, instead of relying on that to potentially guide me to books by George R. R. Martin, he led me to the fantasy section. I felt confused and lost by all the books despite his best efforts to recommend a couple authors that he enjoyed reading because he liked the fantasy genre as well.

I did not feel very invested in through this process because I felt as though he was reluctant to recommend a book because he feared recommending something that I might not enjoy reading. He could have been intentional to ask open-ended questions that would help him discover what were my preferences when it came to fantasy, which leans toward paranormal romance with authors like Sherrilyn Kenyon and JR Ward. This conversation was not as productive as I felt that it should have been, and I couldn’t find a book that I was genuinely satisfied with to be able to sit down to read for relaxation.

Andrew did not seem to have formal training in reader’s advisory as he did “fail to conduct an interview; they tend to rely on personals apart from the catalog (helpful only for a known author or title); and they do not follow up” (RA Interview, 163). I walked by the information reference afterwards to see if he would notice that I did not end up choosing the book that he recommended but he glanced at me and returned to what he was doing on his computer. I felt as though that was what he had been distracted by, and that was something that he could have paused briefly to utilize the online catalog and involved me in the process of finding a book for me to enjoy before grabbing it from the shelf for me. I would not have felt as lost when he guided me to fantasy section where I got distracted by a multitude of covers that I was only partially interested in.

He was nice throughout the conversation and he also knowledgeable about popular books in the genre because he is a fan of reading fantasy and paranormal fiction as well. He guided me toward authors like Patricia Briggs and Jim Butcher, which I think fall on the paranormal fiction scale, but I didn’t end up checking any books out because I didn’t feel confident in those recommendations. These were his personal recommendations because I asked him what he has read personally but, instead of focusing on that question, he could have sidestepped it to ask a question about my personal preferences. This conversation could have been more successful if we had remained at the information reference desk and he used the catalog to ask those questions to find a specific book in the library’s catalog that I would enjoy. If he had guided me to that book to be checked out, I felt that I would have checked out the book that he recommended and a bit more invested in because he would have taken the effort to discover my actual preferences.