Last March I heard an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air with Kate Bowler, a divinity professor at nearby Duke University, who had published a memoir about facing stage 4 colon cancer as a young mom, wife, and woman of faith. A memoir about dying and wrestling with one’s spirituality is not something I’d typically read, but Bowler’s realness and unexpected humor in the interview hooked me, and I sat in my parked car listening until the end. Shortly thereafter, I asked my librarian to help me find a copy of her book, Everything happens for a reason: and other lies I’ve loved.
Do you have readers like me, looking for books they’ve heard about on the radio or television? If so, you’ll be excited about a new tool in NoveList that will help you help them. Media Mentions will track which new titles have garnered buzz on popular U.S. radio and network and cable television programs, like NPR’s On Point, Ellen, CBS This Morning, or The Daily Show. (We hope to expand Media Mentions to include additional countries and media outlets.)
Media Mentions debuted in NoveList and NoveList Plus in May 2019, and if your organization is subscribed to either of those databases, you can find and use them right away. Here’s how.
If a title has Media Mentions, you will see them in two spots on the book’s detail page. The five most recent Media Mentions will appear to the right of the book jacket at the top of the page, and the complete list of mentions can be found on the More About This Book tab.
If you’ve already started a search and want to refine it further to see only titles with Media Mentions, you can narrow your results by choosing “Includes Media Mentions” under Additional Limiters on the left side of the search results page.
You can find all Media Mentions or titles that have been featured on a specific program, via Advanced Search.
And finally, you can search for Media Mentions by using field code MM.
We hope Media Mentions will help you connect a reader like me with a book they’ll love. Let us know what you think and how you’re using Media Mentions. You can reach us any time at novelist@ebsco.com.
Jenny Schafer is a Product Manager for NoveList.