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Sunday, February 11, 2001
Library Book Club Goes Cyber
By TAMER EL-GHOBASHY
Daily News Staff Writer
This ain't your father's book club.
A new service available at the Queens Borough Public Library is giving the old Book-of-the-Month club concept a high-tech twist.
Every weekday morning, members of the new OnLine Book Club will receive an e-mail with a portion from a popular book. The daily e-mail is designed to take five minutes to read, with a new book starting every Monday.
Officials at the Queens library say the service will give folks who don't have time to read, or simply don't know what book to pick, a new resource.
"We're doing everything we can to promote reading," said Maureen O'Connor, director of programs and services at the library. "This takes the idea of a book club to the next level."
O'Connor introduced the OnLine Book Club after being approached by Suzanne Beecher, founder and CEO of DearReader, the corporation that picks the books and sends the literary e-mails.
The OnLine Book Club allows members to sample a variety of books through short, consecutive excerpts that appear in their e-mail accounts every morning. Often, O'Connor said, people become interested in the book and end up borrowing it from the library.
"It's a great reader's advisory tool," said Bernadine Byer, a librarian and member of the book club. "It gives you a taste of what's out there, and it fits into people's busy lifestyles."
The service made its Queens debut Monday with the first three chapters of Kathleen Cambor's novel, "In Sunlight in a Garden."
Starting tomorrow, subscribers will be treated to an exclusive, soon-to-be-released title, Amy Tan's "The Bone Setter's Daughter."
The novel will not be available in bookstores until Feb. 19.
"If you give people the opportunity to read a book, they'll take it from there," Beecher said. "The daily e-mails help people make reading a part of their daily routine."
Beecher's Sarasota, Fla.-based program is used by more than 2,000 libraries in the U.S. and Canada and boasts more than 40,000 users.
The books vary from fiction to nonfiction to self-help titles and are selected by Beecher and librarians in participating libraries.
"Members are exposed to 52 titles a year," Beecher said. "If they pursue just one of those books, that's still more than most people read in one year."
Though the Queens OnLine Book Club has been available only for a week, O'Connor said subscribers consider the service a "minivacation from their busy routines."
"This is a great way to entice people into reading," said Queens librarian Rachel Donner. "It's a form of browsing from the comfort and convenience of your e-mail. Hopefully, it will get people to use their library."
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