I have never really experimented with NoveList, although I've heard it mentioned many times. So!
I love that there is a "Canadian Fiction" category, and simply had to choose that as the first area to explore for this exercise. I looked around at the "Historical Fiction set in Canada," and then checked out some other genres and categories available. One of the first things that I noticed while exploring on NoveList is that the reviews here are certainly not short on spoilers! This is something I might mention to patrons while demonstrating this tool - not knowing the ending in advance is important to many readers, and a utility like NoveList is at least partly designed to enhance a reader's experience, I would want to make sure it was not getting in the way of readers' ability to enjoy the suspense in a given work.
But I digress! The ability to focus on an appealing category and then branch out into finding books with similar qualities is very helpful. This ability to browse by branching off on an initial search is lovely, and it pretty nicely mimics one of the ways many people prefer to find information off-line.
I would need to spend more time with each and speak to more patrons before being able to decide whether Goodreads or NoveList has more to offer in the library context, but I think that the style of organization that NoveList provides might be especially helpful for readers seeking a more official, authoritative-seeming resource for obtaining book recommendations. An added bonus is the fact that its layout is relatively simple and fairly non-threatening.
NoveList, I'm sorry for ignoring you in the past! As it turns out, you're pretty cool.
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