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Finding a Book When You lot've Forgotten Its Title

Past

Gwen Glazer, Librarian

Nov 22, 2017

Information technology can be tough to remember the championship and writer of a book you lot read a long time agone—even if information technology was a volume that was really of import to you. Fiction is cataloged by author and championship, non by subject or plot line, which makes identifying books by simply their storyline difficult.

Readers often ask librarians for help finding these kinds of books. And we tin can't figure out the mystery every single time, but we do have a few tricks to help find the answer.

Start, pivot downward everything you can remember about the book, plot, graphic symbol names, fourth dimension period in which the book may have been published, genre, etc. All these details are clues in identifying the championship and author of the book.

Online resource tin help with your search for a one-half-remembered book, fifty-fifty 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, terminal but not to the lowest degree, exit a annotate on this post!

Before You Showtime

Try Google! Type in everything you can remember about the volume — as in, "pic book rabbi animals communication yiddish" — and scroll through the results. (That's a existent-life example of a volume a patron was asking for:It Could Always Be Worsepast Margot Zemach.)

Y'all tin can also try googling one key detail you recall from a volume. 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 case: She Flew No Flagspast Joan Manley.)

Crowdsourcing

• What's the Name of That Book?
  A Goodreads group with searchable discussion posts and thousands of questions and answers.

• Name That Volume
  A LibraryThing grouping of ~3K members — many of whom are librarians or library-next — who help solve book mysteries via threaded discussions.

• The Fiction_L listserv
  Stumpers! Search archives of past questions, answered past an intense volume-ish community, or subscribe and post a new i.

• Reddit's whatsthatbook thread
  A near endless thread of users trying to help other users remember book titles, including several frequently requested books. Especially skilful for science fiction and fantasy.

• "Stump the Bookseller" blog
  A cool indie bookstore in Ohio that maintains extensive, searchable archives — and offers a $4 service for personalized help. Lots of children's books hither.

• Big Volume Search
  If y'all can but call up what the cover looks like, endeavour this cover-search tool.

Library Databases (log in with your library carte)

• Books & Authors

• Books in Print

• The New York Times databases

• NoveList and NoveList K-eight (in-library use just)

How to Move On

Sometimes, it's merely not going to happen, and you can't notice that elusive book you've been searching for. It's okay! Great news: The world is full of great books! Here are a few means to discover more...

• Check out recommendations from our book experts here at NYPL. We offering suggestions via blog posts, the Staff Picks book finder, The Librarian Is In podcast, and more than.
  
• If you'd similar a personalized recommendation, find united states on Twitter or fill out our What Should I Read Next? e-mail class.
  
• Want a brand-new read? Check out our favorite New and Noteworthy titles.

Experience gratis to leave a comment and tell us virtually a book you're trying to remember! Our library staff members will pop in and cheque it periodically, and readers of this post are welcome to make guesses and suggestions.

More Suggestions

• If yous can call up just 1 discussion, use the search function on Goodreads or Library Thing to observe long lists of titles with a item discussion.

• Goodreads' scan-able lists of titles that readers have shelved in unique categories, such every bit authors' professions or decades of publication, is besides be helpful.

• For recently published books, the reviews in Booklist Online are broken down by detailed genre.

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