Children’s booklist: Historical fiction
This was one of the most technically challenging projects I worked on this summer. My supervisor wanted to have a booklist of historical fiction works created, since there were several schools in our service area that did projects related to historical fiction, especially global historical fiction, and it was a constant challenge to keep track of appropriate books.
In essence, she wanted a database (or database-like system) created that would allow her to search for historical fiction* by continent and country. Time period searches would also be handy, but were less crucial than the geographic component. She didn’t want to need to spend a lot of time maintaining it or learning how to use it, didn’t want it to be “socially” public (ie, she didn’t want to deal with “friend requests” or chatting with other users), and wanted to be able to print out exported lists of books for her patrons. It also needed to be free.
My first thoughts were GoodReads and LibraryThing, but both of these proved to be unworkable. GoodReads does not support tags, and their bookshelf system was too cumbersome to really work for this project. While LibraryThing was more hospitable to her needs, only the first 200 books could be imported for free – a serious limitation when you’re dealing with a collection the size of Seattle Public Library’s (or even North East’s, for that matter). Upon a friend’s suggestion, I started playing with Google Books and soon decided that this would be a good platform to support this project. Google Book is free, allows the creation of a person library, allows the unlimited creation of tags, is not substantially a social platform (although it is possible to see other people’s booklists, it is not generally intended or used as a social networking site the way GoodReads is), is very easy to use, and (as a bonus) allows the user to see reviews and ratings from a variety of editorial sites as well as reader reviews. The downside is that the export function is pretty cumbersome at present, allowing creation of an XML file but no other formats. Despite this limitation, it seemed like the best off-the-shelf solution for her needs.
I created an instruction file to guide future DFW students and other volunteers in the creation and use of tags (see attached). The basic idea is to tag for three main concepts: place, time, and logistics. For place, users should tag for continent, country (including both the name at the time of the story’s setting and the present-day name), city (if applicable), and any other applicable geographic features (for example, if the fact that the story is set on an island or a mountain is relevant, include that information; if it’s set on or along a particular river, include that as a tag). For time, the user should tag for century (using BCE if applicable) and decade, as well as including the generally-used name for any world or local events (eg, apartheid, WWII, glastnost, Holocaust, etc.) Including general terms for events is also encouraged (for example, a book set in WWII focusing on the Holocaust would be tagged 20th century, 1940s, WWII, Holocaust, war, genocide). Logistical tags are those that will aid the end user and the patron in locating a book, so these include the call number or shelving area (E, JE, J, YA, FIC) and whether the book is held by North East or just by SPL.
During the time of my DFW, I was able to complete (in so much as such a project can ever be “complete”) a historical fiction booklist for Africa from a booklist provided by Wedgewood Elementary for their students’ use, as well as other online booklists provided by other library systems and individuals. I also volunteered to complete the upload of the remainder of the Wedgewood booklist after the end of my DFW term, as this is one of my supervisor’s top priorities for the next school year.
*While the focus of this project was historical fiction, or fiction with a strong sense of time and place, generally set in a specific historical period or during a recognizable historical event, she also wanted to include books simply set in another country. Wedgewood does a project every year that encourages their students to “Read Around the World” and so books set abroad, even if not “historical” per se, were good candidates for inclusion in this list.
You can examine the guidelines I created for this project here.
You can explore our booklist here.