Did you know that you can use our website to find book recommendations? Maybe you did, but you may not know that there are a variety of ways to do so. Our catalog has many such handy tools to streamline the process of finding books just like the last one. We’ve put together here some quick explainers on a handful of ways you can go about this.
One of these ways is the “lists featuring this book” section. This can be found displayed against a gray background below the “about” and “opinion” sections on a book’s catalog entry.
Typically, this section will contain two options: staff lists and NoveList recommendations.
Booklists
The first of these two is an excellent and broad way to find similar books to the one you’re looking at. We regularly add new booklists and keep old ones up to date, so you should be able to count on CPL staff-made booklists to include currently available titles.
There could be a wide variety of reasons that the titles are grouped together. It could be that they share a female protagonist, they all have a blue cover or even that they all have the word “cookie” in the title. The brain can free-associate in many weird and wonderful ways, though, so it could be that you unexpectedly find just the item you’re looking for.
You may come across other lists from libraries using the same type of web catalog we do, and those titles may not all be available here at CPL. If any are not available here, they may be available locally, and we can help you find them.
If you are feeling inspired, you can also create your own "community list" using your library account.
To do a catalog search for these lists, you can select “lists” from the dropdown menu next to the search bar and type in desired keywords or subjects.
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This feature utilizes a tool called NoveList, which generates lists of similar titles based on a variety of factors like user data, subject headings, themes and story elements. It is a reliable way to quickly source a handful of potentially similar titles.
Subject Headings
Have you ever clicked on the "full details" link in the "about" section for books in our catalog?
Clicking on it will take you here:
Some titles will have more subject and genre headings than others, but selecting “Male friendship,” for instance, will bring up a list of multimedia titles on that topic in both fiction and non-fiction. So, if you want to cast a wide net for similar titles, this is the way to go. You can also see that many of these subject headings are highly specific, like the ones above that are separated by decade.
This can be particularly useful for finding nonfiction titles that cover the same topics but may not share similar titles.
May We Suggest?
For those looking for a personalized experience, you can tap one of our librarians to make a list tailored to your interests. Simply fill out this form, and we will take it from there. You will be provided with a private list of titles and a brief explanation of why we chose these ones for you.
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