Thing 14: Books

I decided to check out the YALSA Book Finder app. I downloaded it over a year ago and often forget it's there!

It's a simple app that can be of great use to a teen (or a librarian trying to help a teen!). Its main purpose is to help teens find titles to read. One of its features is Hot Picks, which makes three title recommendations every day. Users can also browse and search by title, author, genre, year, award, and book list. They can add any of these titles to their favorites.

Oh, look! One of my favorite books!

This is a great way for teens to find book recommendations. However, I have a few concerns. First, not all of the book covers show up. Many of them have the YALSA logo as the book cover. I'm sure this is a fluke (there were some books that did have their covers), but covers can be very good at grabbing the attention of readers (and sometimes deter readers, too...).

Additionally, when a book is selected, there's a button that says, "Find It," which implies it'll show where the book is, whether at a library or bookstore. However, when I click on it, the screen says "Libraries for book not found," but I don't see any options in the app to add a library (and I'm sure the app isn't built to work with just any library catalog). It pulls up Google Maps and shows my location, but doesn't have any information on the book.

Users also have the option of sharing the book on Facebook or Twitter. This is neat, but one comment I have is that many teens don't use Facebook. And while they may use Twitter, Instagram is much more popular. It would be great if they could share a photo of the book on Instagram.

How I feel after a successful RA interaction