WAKEFIELD — If you’ve stopped by Wakefield’s library recently, you already know the Beebe is a great resource for a wide selection of books, eBooks, audiobooks, movies, research databases, computer help, and great programming. One thing you might not have realized is just how much your Wakefield librarians love to talk about books. One of the services we take most pride in providing is using our deep knowledge and love of books to help you find your next great read. And that is why, in 2016, when Tom Stapleton, the (then) Executive Director of WCAT, invited us to bring our enthusiasm for books to their studios, we jumped at the chance.
By way of background, I should tell you there’s a name for the service of helping people find the right book. We call it Readers’ Advisory (RA), and it’s a service that can take many forms, including chatting with patrons in the library about their latest favorite title, and suggesting other books based on their individual likes and dislikes. (By the way, we love to chat with you in this way – please don’t be shy to find us at the Reference Desk and ask). Themed displays and lists of books for people to peruse in the library are also a form of RA.
The RA programs that caught Tom Stapleton’s attention in 2016 were a couple of book recommendation programs we ran every year at the library that we called Beach Reads in the summer and Fireside Chat in the winter. In these programs, librarians create themed recommendation lists of books with brief descriptions of 10 to 20 titles, talk about a couple of books from their list in front of a live audience, and display the lists and books for patrons to take home
with them. Tom and Leane Ellis, then our Readers’ Advisory librarian and the first librarian to have that title in the state, put their heads together to think about how this format could be adapted to the TV studio.
On February 1, 2016, five slightly nervous librarians headed to the WCAT studios to do our first on-air Fireside Chat. We sat in front of a green screen that would later look like shelves packed with books and a joke fireplace crackling on a tv screen behind our heads. For that first event only, we actually had a live audience listening in the studio! With Leane at the helm, as she would be until her retirement at the end of 2017, we talked about our favorites from lists on topics ranging from great “adrenaline” reads to books about Sicily, from novels describing apocalyptic worlds to books about books and the people who love them.
Since then, the format has changed – we now bring a smaller group to a more informal setup in the studio, where Beth, one of our longest-standing Buzzers, can comfortably tuck her legs up on a couch as we chat. There are usually three of us, all current or former members of the Reference staff, and we come once a month to share whatever we’ve been reading recently. The pandemic brought a new phase to Book Buzz, as it did to everything else, and we started recording our own shows, Brady Bunch style, in little squares on Zoom.
We look forward to the time when the masks are off, and we can be back in the studio on a regular basis. The good news is you can see all our programs on both WCAT’s YouTube channel and the library’s own. Through all the changes, one thing has remained the same. We still do (and always will) love to talk about books, and we hope you’ll make a point of joining us on the airwaves, online, or in person to share that love and take away your next great read!
Karen Stern is the Head of Reference and Information Services at Lucius Beebe Memorial Library.
