Our Featured Database

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NOVELIST

This month our featured database is Novelist, designed to help readers connect with great books. Using Novelist, you can enter a favorite title, author, series, or plot element, and find an extensive listing of suggested titles that you might also enjoy. Or if you already have a favorite genre, use Novelist to browse lists of books in that category to find authors and titles you might have missed. Create a personal My Novelist account to save your searches and lists, and to create alerts that will notify you by email when new books by favorite authors or categories are added to the database. Novelist is available for use in the library, or for Patchogue-Medford cardholders, from home with their barcode and PIN numbers.

Access Novelist directly or see listings of all of our databases.

Don't forget to try our previous featured databases:

Morningstar.com Library Edition for investors

P4A Antiques Reference Database for antiques collectors

What's In It?

novelist home page

Why Would I Want To Use It?

Did you know that a new novel is published every thirty minutes in the United States, or that over half of all public libraries in the United States use Novelist to assist their patrons and to help compile reading lists. Novelist has been compiling its database for over ten years now, with the assistance of some of the top names in readers' advisory in the nation. Over 125,000 fiction titles are now in the database, with more titles being added daily. There is no source with a more comprehensive database of fiction titles than Novelist.

How to Use the Database?

Novelist has a brand new, easy to use tabbed interface to help you navigate the database. Explanations of all the tabs follows.

Search our Database

This tab allows you to search the over 125,000 fiction titles in the Novelist database. Search for a favorite author, title, series name, or plot element, and then use those listings to find other books you might interest you.

Sample author search

novelist sample search screen

Sample Search -- Using a "Find a Favorite Author" Search to Find Read-alikes

  1. Click on the "Search Our Database" tab
  2. Click on "Find a Favorite Author"
  3. Type in "Iris Johansen" and click Search
  4. Click on the first title on the results list, "And Then You Die"
  5. Scroll through the entry for the book. You will see an image of the cover, popularity ratings, a brief description, subject headings, book reviews, and links to read-alike lists and author web sites. Depending upon the title and author you choose, there may be more or less content.
  6. Click on "Find Similar Books" just under the photo of the book.
  7. You will see a list of subject headings and an option to have them "required" or "desired" in the search to find read-alikes. In general, the more subject headings you have checked off as required, the less likely you will be to find good matches. Try checking desired subject matches first, and then if the list is too broad, you can revise the search to include some required headings.

novelist author results screen

novelist find similar books screen

Browse Lists

This tab gives you easy access to recommended reading lists.

novelist explore mystery fiction screen

For Readers

This section allows you to find all of the author read-alike lists, book discussion guides, book talks, and annotated book lists that Novelist contains. A new feature of the database worth exploring is the "What We're Reading" section, where some of the most well known librarian reader advisors list their favorite books and authors and tell you why the love them.

Readers' Advisory

Contains materials suitable for those in the readers' advisory field.

School Resources

Contains resources helpful to teachers including BookTalks and Teaching with Fiction guides.

My Novelist

My Novelist is a personal storage area in the database that allows you to save the searches and lists you have created. You can also create alerts that will automatically notify you by email when a new book by a favorite author or in a favorite category is added to the database.

You must signup to create an account.

My Novelist is located in the Tools section, which can be found on the left side of the Novelist screen.

Search History will list all of the searches you have conducted in your existing session of Novelist. Once you exit from the database however, those searches will be erased, and you will have to re-run them the next time you access Novelist. To permanently save your searches, you must login to My Novelist.

Personal Lists allows you to view any titles that you have added to your personal reading list, or to retrieve any titles that you added during previous Novelist sessions.

Saving a Search in My Novelist

  1. Click "Signin to My Novelist" under the Tools menu.
  2. Enter your username and password if you already have an account, or click on "I am a New User" and fill in the form.
  3. Please remember your username and password as the library cannot retrieve them for you.
  4. Click on the "Search our Database" tab.
  5. Perform a search for a title, author, plot, or series name.

Sample Search -- "Describe a Plot Search"

Saving a Personal List

  1. Make sure you are logged into My Novelist.
  2. Under the "Search our Database" tab, click on "Describe a Plot".
  3. In the "Find" box, type in "medieval mysteries england" and click "Search." This should find all the mystery novels in the Novelist database that take place in England during the Middle Ages. At this writing, the search found 197 titles.
  4. Results are displayed 10 at a time. You can now print the list, email it to yourself, and/or sort the list by author, title, publication date, popularity, or relevance.
  5. You may browse through the list by clicking on the title of any books that interest you. If you want to add the title to a Personal List, click on the "add" folder to the right of each title.
  6. Once you are done click on the "View List" link to see your Personal List.
  7. Click "Select All" and then save the list by clicking on the "submit" button next to "Move Selected Items."
  8. Type in a name for the list (eg. English Medieval Mysteries) and click "Submit."
  9. From now on, whenever you logged in to My Novelist, you will be able to "View Saved Lists" under the Tools menu.

Saving a Search

  1. Repeat steps 1-3 above.
  2. Click on "Search History" in the "Tools" box on the left side of the page.
  3. Click on "Save" under "Save/Alert"
  4. Type in a name for the search (eg. English Medieval Mysteries)
  5. If you want you can type in an additional description of ther contents of the search.
  6. Click on "Submit" Your search is now saved. From now on you can access the search under your saved searches, so you will not have to recreate it each time you access Novelist.

Creating an Alert

  1. Repeat steps 1-3 under "Saving A Personal List."
  2. Click on "Search History" in the "Tools" box on the left side of the page.
  3. Click on "Save" under "Save/Alert"
  4. Type in a name for the search (eg. English Medieval Mysteries)
  5. Click on "Alert" under "Save Search As"
  6. Choose whether you want to "Run Alert For" two months, six months, or one year.
  7. Type in a valid email address and a subject for the email.
  8. Under "Email Format" choose either plain text, which can be read by any email program or HTML, which can be read by programs such as Outlook Express, YahooMail, and Hotmail.
  9. Click "Submit" You will now receive automatic email updates, according to the schedule you chose, for any new titles added to the Novelist database that match your search criteria.

This page was last updated on June 27, 2005.