Can you help me find this book?

This is probably the question library staff gets the most from customers. It sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. There are always those customers that don’t know the author or title of the book. All they know is “there were these witches, but they weren’t called witches. They were called The Blood or something and jewels were their source of power.” Or how about, “I’m looking for this book where the dog was the narrator.”

Ye-ah…those aren’t hard at all to find. No, really! Sarcasm aside, there are tools that you can use to help these poor amnesiac customers. One is the database Novelist!

Novelist is located on the database page. Go to http://www.osceolalibrary.org/ >> Mouse over the navigation until you find the “Research” section >> Click on the “Databases” link >> Scroll down to the “Books & Literature” section >> Click on “Novelist” >> If you’re using the databases from home you’ll have to put in your 13 digit library card number.

Once in Novelist, go to the “Search our Database” tab. Click the “Describe a plot” link.

Question 1: “There were these witches, but they weren’t called witches. They were called The Blood or something and jewels were their source of power.”

1. In the “describe a plot” section, I typed the keywords “blood witch jewel” (without the quotation marks).
2. I check marked “adult”
3. The results list gave back three results. One was Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop, which the customer recognized.

Question 2: “I’m looking for this book where the dog was the narrator.”

1. For this question, I need to know the terminology the database uses dog narrators. Sometime what search terms we think to use is not what the database categorizes the books under. I decided to use a book with an animal narrator to which I new the author and title.
2. On the main page, in the quick search box I typed “Black Beauty.” This book by Anna Sewell has the horse as the narrator.
3. I found my title and clicked on it. Under the subject headings I spotted “Stories told by animals” as a subject.
4. I went pack to the “describe a plot search” and typed it in and checked “adult” and “young adult” because the customer wasn’t sure which it was.
5. The results list got 189 hits. The customer and I scrolled through the listing and she found her book, Far from Burden Dell by Christopher Coppel, by reading the review in the record.

So you see? Those hard book questions can be answered! Or…you know…you can simply pass it on to the librarians. :-) Whatever floats your boat!