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To provide a comparative review of the teaching of Readers' Advisory Services in schools of library and information science in selected schools in the USA, Canada and Europe.

After reviewing the literature, schools are selected based on their known activity in providing readers' advisory service courses or on their national ranking (in the case of US schools) to provide a snapshot of current level of readers' advisory instruction.

Instruction in readers' advisory services is a very small part of the total curriculum in schools examined. Librarians who wish to gain more insight to readers' advisory services must depend on continuing education opportunities, such as workshops and conference programs, not on courses in the curriculum of schools of library and information science.

This paper raises questions as to the relationship between library and information science curricula and the needs of practicing librarians to provide services to leisure readers. It finds that, despite an increased interest in providing readers' advisory services in libraries, library education is not responding to that need and continuing education and training programs are essential to providing librarians who are well prepared to serve leisure readers. For schools which are contemplating adding coursework in these areas, the case studies detail courses as they are offered at other institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to address a somewhat under‐researched aspect of readers' advisory services in public libraries in North America, namely, readers' advisory for immigrant readers, with a particular emphasis on the readers' advisory interaction/interview.

The argument draws on the review of relevant scholarly and professional literature and the author's experience in working with immigrant readers.

It is suggested that public libraries in North America are not actively involved in providing readers' advisory services to immigrant readers aside from developing and maintaining multilingual collections. This trend in readers' advisory practices is clearly reflected in professional and scholarly publications of the field. It is argued that personal interactions with immigrant readers, in the context of the readers' advisory interview, can be an efficient way to engage immigrant readers in the life of the host society, thus fostering their socio‐cultural integration beyond information needs and basic coping skills.

The paper offers practical insights and suggestions for the enhancement of readers' advisory interactions with immigrant readers in public libraries. It also places readers' advisory interactions with immigrant readers in the broader context of readers' advisory practices, public library services to immigrant users, and the theory of readers' advisory interviews.

The children's room in my hometown library in Marion, Ohio, was a bright, comforting site, with low shelves of colorful books on every imaginable topic and a desk where kids could, under the librarian's careful guidance, use a red date‐due stamp to check out their own books.

This paper presents some ideas about readers' advisory service for library users whose primary language is not English to offer a perspective about some of the issues involved. Questions are raised to stimulate further study and research in this area of librarianship.

Addressed to the audience of LIS educators at all levels, from full-time and adjunct faculty teaching in LIS programs, to librarians and library consultants delivering professional development training, to practitioners who work with readers in all types of libraries, this article makes a case for replacing the term “readers' advisory” with the term “Reading Experience (RE) librarianship” as a designator of the current professional practice.

Using historical and discursive analysis based on the extensive literature review, this article argues that a number of factors call for the change in terminology: changes in the human factor (i.e., changes in readers and reading behavior; and changes in relationships between readers and librarians) and changes in the library environment (the rise of “experience” in libraries; a greater commitment to outreach and community engagement; and the fact that librarians are already practicing RE librarianship without recognizing it as such). It also examines the role of LIS educators in fostering and supporting RE librarianship.

On the one hand, the new terminology will be more reflective of the work that reader service librarians currently do, thus doing justice to a wide range of activities and expanded roles of librarians; on the other hand, it will serve as an imperative and a motivator to further transform reader services from in-house interactions with and programs for avid readers into a true community engagement, with much broader goals, scope and reach.

The article stands to coin a new professional term for the transformed library practice, thus recording a radical change in longstanding professional activities and encouraging new community-oriented thinking about the expanded role of librarians in promoting reading in diverse social environments.

Advising readers has received renewed attention in public libraries, library associations, and programs of library and information science. Writing of their belief in readers' advisory services Saricks and Brown note, “Readers' advisors and proponents of the service subscribe whole‐heartedly to the philosophy that reading, of and by itself, has intrinsic value.” In her essay on new directions for readers' advisory services, Ross characterizes readers' attitudes toward books as providing a “special kind of pleasure that cannot be achieved in any other way,” and summarizes several studies that examine the role of reading in people's lives.

In a recent RQ column, Sharon L. Baker reviewed the profession's literature in the area of readers' advisory services. She found that very little research existed in the area of readers' advisory services. The research that does exist is focused on “passive” readers' advisory strategies. Baker is a leader in this area and her articles on overload and browsing, the use of displays, and genre classification are essential to understanding the adult fiction reader and ways in which libraries can assist these individuals in locating new authors and titles of interest.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze a number of issues related to both education for and the practice of reading and readers’ advisory in library and information science (LIS). Written from the standpoint of an LIS educator, the paper is addressed to LIS professors, future and current LIS students, and public services librarians working in all types of libraries, including academic and special, because the practice of reading is no longer limited to school and public libraries. Librarians’ expertise can also benefit a larger community outside of the library walls, which would take outreach and embeddedness to an entirely new level.

The paper analyzes the situation in LIS education and reading practices based on a vast array of published sources and the author’s personal experience as an LIS educator.

The following problematic points are raised: modeling reading work and education for reading after information services and information science education, respectively; outdated pedagogical approaches; insufficient user orientation and excessive focus on materials; limiting reading activities to one to two types of libraries; insufficient community outreach; and, in general, the prevalence of responsive rather than proactive practices.

The paper proposes some solutions for the identified problems, the implementation of which depends on the collective effort and the collective will. However, it does not offer a particularly optimistic or upbeat view on the possibility of swift and sweeping changes.

In the novel, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers probes the American malaise through the longings of a young adolescent girl. Twelve‐year‐old Frankie no longer sees the world as round and inviting as a school globe. No, the world is huge and cracked and turning a thousand miles an hour. Indeed, the world seems separate from herself. In the midst of chaos, Frankie sees her brother's upcoming wedding as a chance to feel connected, to feel that she matters. The story focuses on Frankie's efforts to be a “member of the wedding,” as she recognizes, “they are the we of me.”

Browsing rooms are those alluring spaces in the college or university library where the reader may shut out the flood and clamor of information. Here the imagination and personal interests of the reader are nurtured. Today's browsing rooms are vestiges of the 1920s and 1930s, developed in an era when academic libraries vigorously promoted recreational reading interests of students. As repositories of works chosen from the main collection for their ability to uplift, relax, and stimulate the student reader, the browsing collection in the college library of the 1930s was itself the embodiment of readers' advisory, that Cadillac of public library services.