Novelist Deserves a Plus, Novelist Plus Not so Much

First off, I'm the director of a hospital library and we don't buy fiction so I did a lot of this assignment using nonfiction authors and titles.  Thus, my assessment of the Novelist databases.

For the initial part of  the assignment, I searched for "Jane Rizzoli" and could definitely see how using the view option would help when showing this database to patrons.  I liked the "grid" view where the patron basically sees the book jackets and some minimal information.  This would make browsing a long list easier, not to mention printing.

For the second part, using the David Baldacci example, I thought the "Read-Alikes from NoveList" feature was great.  I love the way it gives you so much detailed information and really helps you decide which author and title is the best book for you.  If your library doesn't have the book the patron was looking for when they came into the library, I would think you should be able to find a successful substitution using this database.  It's like having a million brains at your fingertips. 

Next, I spent time exploring Novelist Plus from my perspective (although I will say in almost 20 years I have never encountered anyone who has come into my library and said, "I've read Susan Love's Breast Book," can you recommend something else?")  I put in a few well-known popular medical writers (Susan Love, Andrew Weil, Atul Gawande) and either did not find much for read-alikes or found the read-alikes to be a bit off.  They seemed to be mainly selected based on genre more than anything else and there was nowhere near the detail of the fiction entries.  Then I started trying some older fiction from my youth (Monkey Wrench Gang, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and those had, IMHO, iffy read-alikes as well.  I wonder what others think?