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By Web Admin
By Web Admin
By TRWCBlogger
Have you ever tried to find a book you read years ago, only to discover that you have no recollection of the book’s title or author?
Unfortunately, books are not categorized by storylines or characters (you know, the things that we CAN easily remember). They are categorized by the titles and authors— the very things that we cannot seem to recall.
So, how can you find a book without knowing the title or author?
Here are a few great tips from the New York Public Library that can help solve this book finding dilemma:
First, pin down everything you can remember about the book, plot, character names, time period in which the book may have been published, genre, etc. All these details are clues in identifying the title and author of the book.
Online resources can help with your search for a half-remembered book, even if all you have is a basic plot line. Searching yourself is a good place to start; then, you can post to a listserv or discussion forum, where someone might recognize it. Or, last but not least, leave a comment on this New York Public Library post!
Try Google! Type in everything you can remember about the book — as in, “picture book rabbi animals advice yiddish” — and scroll through the results. (That’s a real-life example of a book a patron was asking for: It Could Always Be Worse by Margot Zemach.)
You can also try googling one key detail you remember from a book. One of our librarians solved a book mystery by searching “USS You-Know-Who” — the name of a boat in the story that the patron happened to remember. (Another real-life example: She Flew No Flags by Joan Manley.)
Sometimes, it’s just not going to happen, and you can’t find that elusive book you’ve been searching for. It’s okay! Great news: The world is full of great books!
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