I’ve had the absolute joy of participating in University of Washington Tacoma Library’s Real Lit[erature] book club for the past two years and have read a total of five novels over that time.
In an attempt to communicate the deep sense of community, the richness of the conversations, and the diversity of the literature celebrated in the club, I brainstormed a series of blog posts. These posts “Real Lit in Review” are meant to serve as an opportunity for active members of Real Lit to reflect on the text they’ve just spent three months with and as a window into the club for members of the UWT community that haven’t participated yet (with the purpose of encouraging further community engagement).
This blog post is for UWT staff and Real Lit members to reference in the event that they’re interested in carrying on this type of posting tradition. I will be graduating from the MLIS program in the Spring and want to leave a record of the process here for posterity.
If you’re interested in checking out a past post, my favorite was on Icarus by K. Ancrum.
Real Lit in Review Timeline
An End of Term Process
WEEK 7:
Create a Google Form (or use other data collection software) to collect book club participants reflections.
Here is the template I’ve adapted for the Real Lit in Reviews’ I’ve created, using Icarus as an example:
WEEK 8:
Bring up the project in the Real Lit meeting so that members have a head start on brainstorming their responses.
WEEK 10:
Drop the link to the response collection form into the final Real Lit Zoom meeting of the term and give a timeline for responses. I’ve usually asked for responses by the end of WEEK 1 of the following term so I can have the blog post up by WEEK 2.
You can also add the link to the #reallit Slack channel and/or email the list of people that have signed up for the club.
WEEK 1:
At the beginning of the week, send a gentle reminder to fill out the form. Start drafting the blog post.
Blog Post Template:
Title; “Real Lit in Review: [Book Title]”
Explanation of Real Lit mission and vision; (feel free to use the copy I put together on this or write your own)
e.g. “Real Lit is a book club put on by the University of Washington, Tacoma once a quarter and focuses on Young Adult fiction centering diverse perspectives, protagonists, and stories.”
*The link to the Real Lit information page is linked in the above description.
Description of the book & plot summary; as long or short as you feel is appropriate for context
Description of the book as done by the publisher or author; optional
Suggested Tags; for the Icarus post I did tags that you might find on Ao3 using community driven folksonomy terms for accessibility to the text
Common Themes in Discussion; pull out a few themes or points of discussion that were common throughout the term to highlight! For Icarus I chose three: the strange font of the book, how the text played with our prior knowledge of the myth of Icarus, and the hazy boundaries of interpersonal relationships throughout the book.
Transition to Reviews and Reflection; again, feel free to adapt my original copy for this!
e.g. “We’ve collected some reviews, quotes, reflections, etc. from our Real Lit participants to give you a window into our world of the last 10 weeks! If you’ve read the book, want to read the book (you can check out a copy from the UW Library here), or have general thoughts/questions about Real Lit, we want to hear about it! Add a comment!”
*update the link “here” to reflect the Real Lit book choice as it shows up in the UW Library catalog.
Reviews and Reflections; import responses to the Google Form as quotes (feel free to intersperse with photos, videos, music, podcasts, etc. if there’s related media that might be fun to explore or if the block of text is becoming overwhelming)
Quotes; if there are any quotes from the text that you want to highlight, add them at the end! (feel free to intersperse with photos, videos, music, podcasts, etc. if there’s related media that might be fun to explore or if the block of text is becoming overwhelming)
*As I’m writing this, it occurs to me that it could be fun to end a wrap up like this with suggestions of titles like it as a sort of if-you-liked-this-try-this moment 🙂
Publishing
Before publishing the post, make sure to double check:
- did you add hyperlinks where you could?
- have you added images (or other digital objects) to break up the text and make it visually appealing?
- do your images (or other digital objects) have appropriate credit and copyright info attached?
- do your images have appropriate alt text?
- have you faithfully recorded the reviews and reflections from other Real Lit members?
- have you selected the following categories?
- Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion
- Library Life
- have you added Tags for discoverability?
- Tags could include:
You’re ready to publish! Make sure to share the final blog post in the #reallit Slack channel.