Featured Article: New Way to Bring Great Books to Kids

For almost a year, the CLCD staff has been energetically exploring exciting new ways to provide our extensive database to school and public librarians.

It is a notable time in children’s and YA publishing, and we wanted to provide a product that allows you, the librarian, to make the best, most informed decision about the books that you purchase for your libraries and classrooms. And, we wanted to make finding these books effortless. We also wanted to create a product that helped with readers’ advisory.

Finding the right book for the right person can be a challenge. No two people are the same, and no two books are the same. With other job responsibilities besides just readers’ advisory, finding that right book for the right person at the right time can be humanly impossible at times. Thus, we understood the need to look online at others’ recommendations and reviews. Our development team thought about this. Several staff librarians pondered a solution. In the end, as a united team, we collectively decided a solution was CLCD PreK-12 Discovery.

CLCD PreK-12 Discovery was created to provide a more reliable readers’ advisory service using a topic-focused platform. Using artificial intelligence alongside the largest children’s and YA literature database, Discovery provides topic-focused search parameters, which can combine with age ranges to find “THE BOOK” for the reader. It even extends to an Award Search focus feature.

While Discovery can be useful for academic librarians, it is most desirable for school and public librarians. Every day, school and public librarians interact with patrons who have grown up using Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Netflix.These media retailers use categories to organize their product, not the Dewey system. Many school librarians already know this, having altered their library’s organization into categories and have found it to be much easier for students to find books on their own. So CLCD PreK-12 Discovery builds upon this focus- meeting users where they are, using the search format they are accustomed to using.

For us, the mission is still the same- get books into the hands of children and create a world of readers. We know that our clients share in this mission. Together we can make this dream a reality.

Enjoy the rest of your summer,