Welcome to Week One

 Hello Everyone!

I am very excited to get to know you all and get this class going! My name is Erin Cataldi, and I will be teaching this course. I am the teen and adult services librarian at the Clark Pleasant Branch of the Johnson County Public Library as well as the readers' advisory manager. If you're ever in Whiteland (south of Indianapolis), please feel free to visit me! I'd love to get to meet you in person as well!

This class is fun. We read fun things and generally have great discussions. However it has a lot of reading. If you are interested in doing Readers’ Advisory you likely enjoy reading anyway, but I want to make sure at the beginning that all of you are aware that you will be responsible for readings in the textbook, relevant articles, and reading five novels in different genres throughout the course of this class. It's definitely doable, but can be challenging to fit in if you work full time and/or have kids. Audiobooks can help you out and are acceptable ways to read your five novels! I will expect you to allude to the readings in your weekly prompts.

This week I want you to concentrate on learning a bit about the history of readers’ advisory, reviewing the syllabus, and thinking about what genres you will be interested in learning more about. By the end of Week Two, you will need to tell me what five genres you are interested in reading and annotating for this class. I strongly recommend that you choose at least one genre that you never read, for your own benefit and learning experience, and one genre you are an expert in or that is your favorite, for our benefit and learning experience.

Also by the end of Week Two, you will need to create a blog. Most of our communication in this class will be via blog. I feel this is a more organic way to communicate than Canvas forums, plus you can keep it after you graduate. If you have never created a blog before and need help let me know. I used to let students pick whatever blog site they wanted but it led to some chaos, so I am requiring everyone to create a blog using blogger. It is very easy to create and upkeep, and it's free! Once you give me your blog URL, I will post it in the blog roll on this blog. That way you can see all of your classmates’ blogs and easily comment on them, follow them, however you want to keep track – it’s up to you. It has proven a great way to start or add to your social network of librarians. Feel free to use your current blog if you have one (as long as it is in Blogger) – just please label any assignments clearly.

I will expect you to comment on each others’ blogs. Every Sunday evening I will check all blogs and mark down the comments on that week's posts, keeping tallies to make sure everyone is participating. I expect more than one word replies as this will count towards your class participation. At least three well written comments should be written per student, per week. Every week I encourage you to check out different student's blogs as well, don't just comment on the same few, make it a point to visit a few new student's blogs every week, there are a lot of you in this class!

Reading about what other people are reading helps A LOT in readers’ advisory. I know this probably goes unsaid but just in case, there is one ground rule – this is a safe place. No teasing each other – if someone says the only book they have ever loved is a sparkly vampire romance they are to be treated with respect, just as a patron would. The definition of a good book, for the purpose of readers' advisory, is always one that is enjoyed by the reader.

I have posted more detailed assignment descriptions in Canvas resources. Please review them this week and let me know if you have any questions. Please check this blog weekly!

You may ask me questions any way is easy for you – comment on this blog or you can text or email me. During the week I should be able to get back within a few hours, but on the weekend my response time may be more than 24 hours (I have a toddler at home), so please don't procrastinate until the weekend when you have assignments due! Thanks, and I really look forward to getting to know all of you! Happy Monday!