Biblio File

Finding a Book When Y'all've Forgotten Its Title

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Library books lined up on a shelf Check out selected results from NYPL Championship Quest 2019, held August 2, 2019, equally well as Title Quest 2018.

This is an update of a previous post by Sharon Rickson.

Information technology can be tough to remember the title and author of a book you read a long time ago—fifty-fifty if information technology was a book that was actually important to you. Fiction is cataloged by author and championship, not past field of study or plot line, which makes identifying books by simply their storyline hard.

Readers ofttimes inquire librarians for help finding these kinds of books. And we tin can't figure out the mystery every unmarried fourth dimension, but we do have a few tricks to help find the answer.

First, pin down everything you can remember about the book, plot, graphic symbol 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 aid with your search for a half-remembered book, fifty-fifty if all you have is a bones plot line. Searching yourself is a skillful identify to start; then, yous tin post to a listserv or discussion forum, where someone might recognize it. Or, last but not least, leave a comment on this post!

Before You Start

Effort Google! Type in everything y'all tin can remember about the volume — as in, "picture volume rabbi animals advice yiddish" — and scroll through the results. (That's a real-life case of a book a patron was request for: It Could Always Be Worse past Margot Zemach.)

Y'all tin can also try googling i cardinal detail you think from a book. One of our librarians solved a book mystery by searching "USS Y'all-Know-Who" — the name of a boat in the story that the patron happened to recall. (Another real-life case: She Flew No Flags by Joan Manley.)

Crowdsourcing

  • What'due south the Proper noun of That Volume?
    A Goodreads group with searchable discussion posts and thousands of questions and answers.

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

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

  • Reddit'due south whatsthatbook thread
    A nearly endless thread of users trying to help other users retrieve book titles, including several oft requested books. Especially good for science fiction and fantasy.

  • "Stump the Bookseller" blog
    A absurd indie bookstore in Ohio that maintains all-encompassing, searchable athenaeum — and offers a $iv service for personalized help. Lots of children's books here.

  • Big Book Search
    If you tin merely recall what the cover looks like, try this cover-search tool.

Library Databases (log in with your library card)

  • Books & Authors

  • Books in Impress

  • The New York Times databases

  • NoveList and NoveList K-8 (in-library apply only)

More Suggestions

  • If you can remember just ane word, employ the search function on Goodreads or Library Thing to observe long lists of titles with a particular word.

  • Goodreads' browse-able lists of titles that readers have shelved in unique categories, such equally authors' professions or decades of publication, is also be helpful.

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

How to Move On

Sometimes, information technology'southward but not going to happen, and you can't discover that elusive volume you've been searching for. It's okay! Keen news: The world is total of bang-up books! Here are a few ways to find more...

  • Check out recommendations from our volume experts here at NYPL. We offer suggestions via blog posts, the Staff Picks book finder, The Librarian Is In podcast, and more.
  • If yous'd like a personalized recommendation, detect us on Twitter or fill out our What Should I Read Next? email form.
  • Want a make-new read? Bank check out our favorite New and Noteworthy titles.

Feel free to go out a comment and tell u.s.a. about a book you're trying to remember! Our library staff members will pop in and check it periodically, and readers of this post are welcome to make guesses and suggestions.