In my readings during the week, I have been learning about the abundance of selection aids. I never realised there were so many available and how these sites were used to guide resources selection for TLs. I decided to review three online selection aids; Walker Books Australia and New Zealand, Booktopia, and Scholastic Book Wizard. The school library in which I work uses Booktopia as a selection tool. We have two libraries; one P-6 (co-ed day school), the other 7-12 (girls only boarding school) which means we have a variety of needs to address in resource selection. Here are my findings:

Walker Books Australia and New Zealand

Strengths

• Easy to use
• Variety of ways to search
• Gives age range recommendations for each title as you click into it
• Books are available in Australia

Weaknesses

• Only displays books that are distributed by Walker Books Australia
• Physical resources only – no ebooks or audio books available through this service
• Pricing is embedded in the fine print
• Can’t purchase direct from the publisher

I found this to be a valuable website, however I would probably only use it to get information about latest titles and age recommendations.

Booktopia

Strengths

• Easy to use
• Variety of ways to search
• Shows other similar books when you select a book to look at
• Books are available in Australia
• When a book is selected it shows if it’s also available as an ebook and/or audiobook
• Clear pricing
• Reviews provided when a book is selected
• Wishlist builder

Weaknesses

• No age recommendations when a book is selected. This can be difficult for a school library because the content needs to be considered before purchasing. This is particularly pertinent when selecting manga.
• Can be overwhelming as you go down the rabbit hole of recommendations

I found Booktopia to be a particularly user-friendly website and the search functions are easy to use. Everything is set out clearly and I like to wishlist builder so that I don’t lose track of what titles I am interested in.

Scholastic book wizard

Strengths

• Select books by reading level or grade level
• Simple funneling system to get to the recommendations
• The more options you select the more refined the search
• Click through to the main Scholastic teacher store
• Search results are not overwhelming because of the series of filters on the search
• Further recommendations are available for similar style books
• Wishlist function

Weaknesses

• Can’t just browse as soon as you open the webpage. You have to click through a series of options to get to the books.
• Not a lot of options come up after each search so there are limited options.

I found this website looks good to start with but turned out to be slightly frustrating because the search functions were so restricting. Unless I was looking for a recommendation for a particular genre for a particular year level, I would probably rather go straight to the Scholastic Teacher Store site.

Overall, Booktopia seems to be a one-stop-shop for physical and digital resources and I believe this is why is it utilised as a selection aid at my school library.