Special Topics Paper Summary

A Brief History of Adult Readers Advisory in the United States

    Readers’ Advisory has undergone a lengthy evolution in the United States. From humble beginnings

to a complete renaissance, the meaning of “adult readers advisory” and how it  relates to the American Public Library system has changed from nonfiction book lists curated by scholarly librarians to tailored patron fiction and nonfiction recommendations. For a lengthy portion of time, nonfiction dominated the RA service. Between 1920 and 1940, just after the First World War and before the Second, librarians were dedicated to crafting extensive lists of nonfiction to give to patrons who were looking for their next read.

Despite this sudden recognition of the need for adult readers advisory services, and the 

subsequent officialization of it via the ALA statement, readers advisory was lost during the war 

years. Despite librarian efforts during the war to ensure that soldiers had reading material, the 

uphill surge that RA had been experiencing sort of mellowed out. Due to this, the period from 

1940 until 1984 saw RA becoming lost, a forgotten service amongst all other public library 

adult services being offered.

However, the service did make a surprising and urgent comeback in 1984. Librarians 

offering readers advisory argued that previous methods of providing advisory were “‘didactic,’ 

had ‘pedagogical origins,’ and were interested in ‘elevating the masses’ by ‘mov[ing] readers 

toward classic works… and outlining a plan of reading that would be educational, not recreational”

(Dilevko & Magowan, 2007, p. 23). They therefore advanced the theory that RA should provide 

patrons with books they will actually enjoy (and read), with buzzwords such as 

“pleasure reading” and “recreational reading” popping up more and more. Additionally, 

words such as “renaissance, resurgence, and revival – indicators that readers’ advisory had 

been of crucial importance for public librarianship in the past, but more recently had fallen on 

hard times – were used to describe the explosion of interest in readers’ advisory between 1980 

and 2005” (Dilevko & Magowan, 2007, p. 3). Readers advisory post 1984 underwent a 

marketing and rebranding campaign like no other. Some have attributed this boom to the

 work of publishing companies hoping to market their bestsellers to even more sellers. 

    I had to cut out quite a bit for this summary! But overall, RA went from nonfiction to nonexistent 

to full of fiction recs.

References

Crowley, B. (2005). Rediscovering the history of readers advisory services. Public Libraries, 

44(1), 37-41.

Dilevko, J., & Magowon, C. F. C. (2007). Readers’ advisory service in North American public 

libraries, 1870-2005: A history and critical analysis. McFarland, Inc. Publishers.