Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

The current policy reads:

Awards should have a clear winner; ranked lists are generally not considered awards. If an award has a middle tier such as an honor medal or a shortlist and is an award notable enough that other nominees are also listed, the award can be listed as two awards, one for the winner and the longlisted nominees and another for the shortlist.

Emphasis added, of course, but this is the area that needs clarification for me. I am seeing a number of "Honor" awards separate from the main award. However, with only one known exception, these awards do not have a third tier - just the award and the honor titles.

It seems to me that the honor titles should appear with the main award as nominees and a note in the award description that nominees are honor titles is the way the policy is intended.

Here is the list of awards with "Honor" in their name - as I post, as some of the smaller awards are in the process of being merged. But I ask now because, obviously, there are some larger awards lurking at the top of the list. (The Tiptree Honors are the middle tier and the one known to comply with policy.)

https://www.goodreads.com/award?utf8=...

Working away, I found another exception, though it doesn't yet have any of the 3rd tier books added.

https://www.goodreads.com/award?utf8=...

Edit: and another, wherein the description of the award for winners explicitly states it is for winners and recommended titles (which have yet to be added).

https://www.goodreads.com/award?utf8=...

And I know personally of another award that violates policy:

https://www.goodreads.com/award?utf8=...

because I added The California Book Awards myself, early in my award librarian career. If we agree that a 2nd level of an award that does not have a 3rd level should be merged, I will need to take care of these also.

My first idea was, we need a better award system on Goodreads, but as we have to find a way with the current system:

If an award has several specific levels of winning it shouldn't matter if there are 2 or 3 levels for how we list them. For me, an award with gold and silver should be handled the same way as one with gold/silver/bronze.

The most well-known Dutch children's book award has a gold and a silver level, but only original Dutch books can win gold. Translated books can only win silver. So winning silver doesn't mean in all cases they were nominated for gold.

Renske wrote: "The most well-known Dutch children's book award has a gold and a silver level, but only original Dutch books can win gold. Translated books can only win silver. So winning silver doesn't mean in all cases they were nominated for gold. "

Is there ever an intersection of these? I have worked on a couple of awards recently where the country's titles were one category and the foreign/translated works were another category. This sounds to be the case with this award.

Renske wrote: "If an award has several specific levels of winning it shouldn't matter if there are 2 or 3 levels for how we list them. "

I can easily agree with this. Are we as librarians charged with deciding which awards are "notable" enough so that we can determine which awards we separate the middle tier and which we do not?

bump

Rivka, I just wanted to make sure you'd seen this. I realize staff might be having discussions and are still thinking.

We actually don't seem to have any strong opinions on this. We're fine with letting our experienced librarians make the call on these.

So, following the manual, when an award has only 2 tiers they should both appear in only one award?

Seems reasonable.

Thank you. It will be a lot of work to undo the merging, so I wanted to make sure there was no revisiting the policy before proceeding.

I'm not a fan of this change. Now when I want to look at, for example, the list of Caldecott Honor books, I have to page through all the Caldecott Medal winners first. The first time after the change was made, I couldn't even find the Caldecott Honor list because it was just gone. And now all of the honor winners are listed as a "Caldecott Medal Nominee" which makes it sound like they were considered for winning an award, but didn't. If I was an illustrator who had won this award, I sure wouldn't be happy about it. And I really don't see what was gained by combining the two lists.

I notice that this change has been made to quite a few of the award lists that I try to keep up with. For the shorter lists, it isn't as much of a problem, but I really dislike it for the longer lists of books.

I also disagree with this change. As a Children's Librarian with 20 years of experience in children's literature and having working closely with several people who have served on one or both committees, I can tell you that the "Honor" books are considered to be on the same level as the actual award winners.

In children's literature the Honor books are as important as the medal winner.

I'm still not liking this change. The Newbery Honor books are not "Newbery Medal Nominees" as they are now called by Goodreads on the main page for each of those books. It's inaccurate and misleading to call a book that won an award a nominee - even if the award won was a silver medal instead of a gold, or second place instead of first. If the lists have to be combined, could the award listed on each book's page at least be accurate? Can't we do better than a note on the award's main page saying that "nominee" means "honor"?

Just wanted to chime in on this old thread to agree with Luann and Melanie. The Caldecott and Newbery medals do not have "nominees," and using that nomenclature is misleading. Until the winners are announced - the medal winner, and the honor books - no one in the public is even aware of which books are being considered. The honor books are not "nominated" as such, and getting an honor is considered as winning an award, in its own right. I think the current system is really very confusing, misleading, and counter to fact. Every time I see the "nominee" description, I wince. It shows a clear lack of knowledge of the children's literature award scene.

Just my two cents, but if it were somehow possible to get it back to "Honor Book" as opposed to "Nominee," I would be all for it.

Abigail wrote: "Every time I see the "nominee" description, I wince. It shows a clear lack of knowledge of the children's literature award scene."

Thanks for chiming in, Abigail. Every time I see the "nominee" description I wince, or sigh, or roll my eyes - or all of the three. It just feels wrong to me. Maybe another voice will make a difference?

It is possible to put it back, but if those in charge don't agree, then someone else will just change it back to the current way. I noticed that for a while someone had listed the Newbery Honor books from last year as Newbery Honor books, which meant they weren't listed on the current Newbery list, but at least they had the correct award listed on their individual book page. I see that it's been changed now.

I now try to ignore the "official" GR awards listings and take comfort in the fact that at least I can tag the books with the correct award names on my own shelves. It seems to be the only thing to do, since no one in an official capacity cared about the issue.

When there were two awards, it did not comply with policy. Policy has not changed.

Luann wrote: "I now try to ignore the "official" GR awards listings and take comfort in the fact that at least I can tag the books with the correct award names on my own shelves. It seems to be the only thing to do, since no one in an official capacity cared about the issue..."

It's unfortunate that the policy necessitates putting the incorrect information on the book page! Still, as you say, if no one will take an interest, what's to be done? I just wanted to add my voice to those drawing attention to the fact that this is incorrect.

The default language of the GR Awards can be unfriendly, to say the least. There is no way to turn off the Nominee wording. Books that aren't winners are Nominees. Having an Honor Book read

Newbery Medal Nominee for Honor Book

is even worse, in my opinion.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "The default language of the GR Awards can be unfriendly, to say the least. There is no way to turn off the Nominee wording...."

Yes, it is quite unfortunate.

Abigail wrote: "Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "The default language of the GR Awards can be unfriendly, to say the least. There is no way to turn off the Nominee wording...."

Yes, it is quite unfortunate."

The other issue is the policy that awards that do not have clear winners are not included as awards on GR. The Honor Books, if considered a separate award, do not have a clear winner. In that way, it is truly better to have them included in the main award. I certainly would not want them to be removed entirely, and I think no one else would consider doing so. I tend to think of the Honor Books as shortlisted books, like the Booker and other large, long-running awards.