New book database coming soon to Portage Lake District Library

HOUGHTON — Bookworms in the Keweenaw Peninsula will soon have a suggested list of reading material to choose from. The Portage Lake District Library is implementing software that will make suggestions based on a reader’s likes.

“Novelist” is a book recommendation database that patrons can use to find what the website calls “read-a-likes.” Readers can input authors, titles or series that they’ve enjoyed and the database will recommend them other authors or books that they might like.

“The database also syncs with Good Reads which allows our users to read reviews of the books, once they find them in the Novelist catalog and there’s also a click through link for every novelist item to the library’s catalog, so if they find a book that sounds interesting to them they can actually link to the library’s catalog and see if it’s available there,” said PLDL director Dillon Geshel.

The database also comes with book discussion guides that would be a good tool for teachers and classroom applications to build lesson plans.

The library will be hosting two tutorials this month to teach people how to use the resource. Both tutorials are on Wednesday January 17th at 1:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. The tutorials are free to the public.