http://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2015/7/21/bibliotherapy-or-why-we-still-need-libraries
HCPL started its Book Hunters program in November of 2010 and in the
time since, librarians have compiled more than 5,000 recommendations.
About 50 librarians work as reading list consultants.
The HCPL form
includes questions around likes and dislikes, allows you to select
genre and book format (e-book, audiobook, print) and book length (short,
medium, long). It also allows readers to request books along a sliding
scale of sensibilities including humor (a lot, a little, none or don’t
care) sex, violence, obscene language, pace, mood and more. It’s a
pretty complex form that allows librarians to really dial into what
their readers might want. That profile then gets matched to a librarian
whose interests align with the reader.
“We’re matchmaking,” Stevens said. “Just like the librarian is matching you to a book, we’re also matching you to a librarian.”
Online user form:
http://www.hcpl.net/form/book-hunters-your-personal-reading-consultants
“We’ve offered this service for seven or eight years, and last year we
decided to revamp the form to make it shorter and easier to fill out.
Since then the popularity of the service has skyrocketed,” Kadir said. Libraries have actually seen a resurgence in usage as the
popularity of e-reading devices has grown, since library members can
borrow e-books for free.
