A: Booklist is a 100-year-old journal, published by the American Library Association, whose core mission is to provide public and school librarians with reviews that help them decide what to buy. In recent years, Booklist has also become a valuable tool that helps librarians make reading recommendations.

Q: What is Booklist Online?

A: Booklist Online is both a free Web site and a subscription database. The free site offers a generous selection of Booklist content—plus some Web-only features—and is updated daily or weekly, depending on the portion of the site. The subscription database contains archived reviews and feature that are dynamically linked.

Q: What is Book Links?

A: A quarterly supplement to Booklist, Book Links magazine is designed for teachers, youth librarians, school library media specialists, reading specialists, curriculum coordinators, and others interested in connecting children with high-quality literature-based resources.

Book Links articles provide comprehensive information on using books in the classroom, including thematic bibliographies with related discussion questions and activities, author and illustrator interviews and essays, and articles by educators on practical ways to turn children onto reading. Published in October, January, March, and June, each Book Links issue focuses on a core curriculum area, including social studies, multicultural literature, language arts, and science. While all Book Links articles from October 2009 onward are available to Booklist Online subscribers, select articles from each issue are made available to the public on the Book Links home page.

Q: What is in the Booklist Online Database?

A: The database contains over 120,000 reviews and thousands of features dating back to 1992. Much of the older material is searchable but not linked in the way newer content is. Please bear with us while we improve the quality of our content.

Q: How do I have my book reviewed in BOL?

A: Please visit our Publishers page for more information.

Q: How do I review books for BOL?

Please visit our Reviewers page for more information.

Q: How do I advertise on BOL?

Please visit our Advertisers page for more information.

Q: Why doesn’t the Review of the Day change every day?

A: We’d love to change it every single day, but our offices are closed on Saturdays and Sundays.

ACCESSING BOOKLIST ONLINE

Q: I subscribe to the print Booklist. Does that give me access to Booklist Online?

A: A subscription to the print journal is included with an online subscription, but the online does not come with a print subscription. Landing-page content, however, is free to all.

Q: Why do I get this message: “You have requested a page of Booklist Online that is available only to subscribers.”

A: You may not have logged in yet. You need to be logged in as a subscriber or authenticated user to use the Search and Browse functions. Enter your Username and Password in the boxes at the top of the blue panel at the right of any screen.

A: Even if you have logged in, you may get this message if your session has timed out. If you have spent a long time reading, without clicking on the screen, or if you have stepped away from your search session for several minutes, Booklist Online automatically logs you out. If you get this message, enter your Username and Password in the login boxes as usual. Once you have been authenticated and gained access to Booklist Online again, you may need to initiate the action you had requested before authentication again.

Q: Can I use any parts of Booklist Online without a subscription?

A: Yes, Booklist Online makes numerous features available for free, without subscription and without login. All the content on the HOME page at http://www.booklistonline.com/default.aspx can be read without logging in. You may also click on a link on the HOME page and read the resulting content for free. This means than many columns, departments and features of the magazine are available to all readers. In addition, the content of the other main pages—Adult Books, Books for Youth, Media, and Reference—is also available freely to all.

Q: How do I subscribe to Booklist Online?

A: Please visit our Subscribers page for more information.

Q: I already subscribe to Booklist. If I subscribe to Booklist Online, can I use the free subscription to Booklist to extend my original subscription?

A: Your complimentary subscription to Booklist cannot be combined with your existing subscription.

Q: I have a subscription to Booklist Online. Where can I administer my account?

A: You can administer your account here.

SEARCHING, BROWSING AND REVIEWING RESULTS

Q: I clicked on “Click here to find more books by this author” but I got works by a different author.

A: “Click here to find more books by this author” works on the first author in a bibliographic citation only. If a work is co-authored and you click on this link, you will find works authored only by the primary (first) author of the book.

Q: Do I need to pay attention to capital letters when I search?

A: No, searching in Booklist Online is case-insensitive. You can use ALL UPPER CASE or all lower case or a Mixture to search authors, titles, and keywords.

Q: I revised my Advanced Search, changing the items in Booklist Taxonomy, but the results are puzzling.

A: It's difficult to see all the items in Booklist Taxonomy, and previously selected terms are not automatically erased when you click new terms. Scroll through the entire taxonomy to make sure you only have those items selected that you want selected. You might want to click on the brown CLEAR SEARCH button at the top of the Advanced Search screen, which will remove all search criteria and return to default settings.

Q: What parts of a record does a Keyword search scan?

A: In Quick Search, a Keyword search looks through the entire record, including title and review text. In Advanced Search, you may search on Keyword in Title, Keyword in Subject, or Keyword in Review, alone or in combination. Use the drop-down “Search On” boxes to select your fields.

Q: Why are my searches for audiobooks and videos returning so few results?

A: At present, we have all the media records for 2006 and 2007 in the Booklist Online database. Due to special challenges in the media portion of our legacy data, however, it's taking us a lot longer to make the media reviews conform with the new publishing system. We're working hard on the problem, however, and plan to add one more year of corrected media reviews each month—meaning we'll be done in around spring 2009. Thanks for your patience.

Q: What is a Find Similar Titles Search?

A: If you’re reading one of our book reviews and you’d like to find more books of similar type and quality, click “Find Similar Titles.” You’ll be offered a short list of books hand-picked by our editors, using a “book sense” that comes from reading millions of pages. If that’s not enough, you can perform a custom search by selecting your favorite subjects in the original review, then ranking them in your preferred order.

Q: Why aren't all of the books discussed in some feature articles linked to Booklist reviews?

A: We are working to add links to all of the books we've reviewed in Booklist. Features such as Top 10s will eventually be fully linked, because Top 10 books are chosen only from books we've reviewed. Some award lists, however, were not chosen by Booklist editors and there might not be reviews for all of the books in the Booklist Online database. We provide such lists as a service to our users and link to Booklist reviews when available. (For more about Booklist's recommended-only policy, click here.)

Q: How can I read the full text of multiple reviews without going back to the search results?

A: On your results list, select the reviews you want by checking the box next to each title, then click the VIEW SELECTED ITEMS button at the top or bottom of the page. The full review for the first title you’ve selected will display—just click NEXT to get to the next review.

Q: When downloading results, the ISBN field looks odd. How do I fix that in Excel?

A: Booklist Online downloads files in CSV format which are flexible but which lose formatting. Once you open the file in Excel, fixing the ISBN formatting is easy. First, highlight the column by clicking on the lettered heading (column J), then click on Format in the menu, then select Cells (keyboard shortcut for formatting cells is CTRL-1). In the tab labeled Number, select “Custom,” then in the “Type” box at the right (where it currently says General), enter ten zeroes (0000000000). Excel will add the initial zero to those numbers that are fewer than 10 digits, and the 13-digit ISBNs will appear correctly as well.

NEWSLETTER

Q: How do I sign up for REaD ALERT, the Booklist Online newsletter?

By following this link. You will then receive REaD ALERT, a free, early look at new Booklist Online content, 20 times each year.

TECHNICAL ISSUES

Q: How can I make Booklist Online better fit the way I search?

A: You can personalize some of the features of Booklist Online through the My Profile feature, found at the right on the top navigation bar. Here you can specify new defaults on the Quick Search menu: the field searched, scope and sections, and the order in which results are displayed. You can also create a subject profile from the Booklist taxonomy and receive alerts when Booklist Online is updated.

Q: Nothing happens when I click PRINT to print search results and when I click EMAIL to send them.

A: You must have “Allow pop-ups” enabled on both your Web browser (Internet Explorer, for example) and your Internet security software (Norton, for example) for PRINT and EMAIL to work.

Q: I still can't get the EMAIL to go. When I click, I get an error message and then the page returns to the previous one.

A: Please note exactly what happens and what error message results and discuss this with your system administrator and with Booklist Online.

Q: Why didn’t the person I sent an email receive it?

A: It may be because emails generated in this way are commonly blocked by spam filters or routed to a spam folder. Ask your colleague to check the spam folder and to query his or her system administrator.

Q: What browsers are compatible with Booklist Online?

A: At present, Booklist Online is optimized for use with the most recent version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Use of other browsers may occasionally result in anomalies of display and functionality. We apologize if this causes you any inconvenience.

LEGAL ISSUES

Q: Can I display your RSS feeds on my own site? What is your syndication policy?

A: Booklist Online’s syndication policy follows:

Booklist Online has opened some of its web-based content and made it available via RSS feeds. Orange icons appear next to those sections of our site that are available for syndication. We are happy to provide this service to individuals and nonprofits under the following terms of use.

Terms and Conditions of Use

1. Individuals and nonprofit organizations may syndicate the content of the sections that are specifically made available for syndication (as indicated by the availability of the icons noted above) for noncommercial use without license, permission, or fee. This means you can subscribe to our feeds in an aggregator or redisplay them on your own website without asking us first.

2. Individuals or organizations who wish to syndicate the material for any purpose other than personal or noncommercial can contact Mary Frances Wilkens at mwilkens@ala.org to discuss a syndication license. This means that if you are a commercial entity or if you would like to display content from our feeds on a page on which you are selling or posting ads, you will need to contact us first to discuss this.

3. We reserve the right to deny syndication licenses or ask you to stop displaying our feed, although we’ll do our best to work with you to find a solution that meets everyone’s needs.

4. No modifications may be made to the content of any material that is syndicated and attribution, including links to the Booklist Online website, may not be removed or altered. If you are displaying our content on your site, it needs to be clearly marked as our content. The use of frames or iframes to display our content still requires proper attribution and needs to be clearly marked as Booklist Online content. This also applies to the display of excerpts of our feeds, as well as the full text.

5. Sections of our site that are not made available for syndication (as indicated by the availability of the icons noted above) may not be “scraped” or otherwise syndicated in any manner.

6. You may not store our content on a computer, website, or in any other form outside of the RSS feed. This means you cannot collect the content and maintain a database, archive, directory, or catalog of it, even for personal use. If you’re interested in access to our full suite of content, we would be happy to talk with you about subscription options.

7. These terms apply to private sites, including authenticated ones such as intranets and portals. Please contact us if you have further questions about this.

8. Syndication feeds are provided “as is” without any kind of warranty. We reserve the right to cancel this service at any time, without notice.

If you do syndicate our content on your site, we encourage you to write and let us know, just so we can thank you and answer any questions you may have in the future.

Please address any questions or concerns to Mary Frances Wilkens at mwilkens@ala.org.

If you have a question not covered here, please email Booklist Online at info@booklistonline.com.

Username:

Password:

Forgot your password?

Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association