BookBrowse For Libraries

BookBrowse For Libraries

How BookBrowse Supports Library Book Clubs

BookBrowse supports library book clubs via our book club resources, advice based on 20+ years of research, and our own online book clubs and forum discussions.

Book Club Resources


A Club of One's Own

For patrons and staff of subscribing libraries, BookBrowse offers digital access to A Club of One's Own - a comprehensive book club guide that expands on our 2019 Inner Lives of Book Clubs research. This practical, inclusive, and inspiring guide helps you build a book club that lasts, whether you're starting your first group or breathing new life into an existing one.

A Comprehensive Guide to Book Clubs

A Club of One's Own is packed with insights on everything from choosing discussion-worthy books to leading meaningful conversations. Learn how to:

  • Create a club that reflects your values, goals, and interests
  • Foster open, respectful, and engaging discussions
  • Navigate challenges like member disagreements or uneven participation
  • Choose great books that spark conversation (and where to find them)
  • Run meetings smoothly, whether in person or online

Bonus Digital Resources

In addition to the full-color guide, subscribing library patrons and staff receive exclusive access to these digital resources:

  • Key Questions to Answer When Starting a Book Club Template
  • The Book Club Health Check Template
  • Book Club Discussion Prep Worksheet
  • Book Club Facilitator Worksheet
  • Example Exit Survey Email
  • Access to a private group of book clubbers in The BookBrowse Community Forum

How to Access

All patrons and staff of subscribing libraries automatically have access to A Club of One's Own and its digital resources through their library's BookBrowse subscription. Simply visit your library's BookBrowse portal or contact your library staff for login information.

Whether your ideal gathering is a tight-knit circle of friends or a public group, A Club of One's Own celebrates the transformative power of reading together and empowers you to create a book club where everyone feels seen, heard, and inspired.


Discussion Guides

BookBrowse has over 2,200 book club discussion guides with more added each week.  If you're looking for a specific book guide's your welcome to search for it directly, but if you're browsing to see which books you'd like to discuss, guides are browseable by author, title, and genre, while subscribing libraries and paying members can filter by setting, time period, and theme.  Subscribing libraries can also take advantage of our advanced filtering to layer these filters on top of each other, making it easy to help your book club decide what to discuss next.  Most of these dicussion guides are also for books that a BookBrowse reviewer has read and recommended, which allows us to provide additional resources for book clubs you won't find anywhere else.

BookBrowse Reviews

BookBrowse reviews are more opinion than summary, so asking your book club members where they agreed and disagreed with our reviewers can make for another interesting topic for discussion.

Beyond the Book Articles

For each book BookBrowse reviews and recommends, we also write a Beyond the Book article highlighting a specific aspect of the book, whether that be a setting, character, or even other similar books.  For example, for James by Percival Everett, our reviewer wrote an article about Reimagining Classics from a New Perspective; after having your book club members read this article, you could ask them if they've read other reimagined classics.  

While BookBrowse has thousands of guides for specific books, we also provide general advice as well, based on 20+ years of research.

Book Club Advice

BookBrowse has surveyed tens of thousands of book clubbers in order to identify common best practices and pain points, and share learnings.

We've curated some of those learnings in our advice page, while we also have dozens of blog posts dedicated to sharing our book club research as well.

BookBrowse's Online Book Club and Community Forum

BookBrowse has its own online book club that's open to all, so many libraries use it as an extension of their own book club programming, particularly for patrons who are not able to attend regular in person meetings or for patrons who prefer a text based, asynchronous discussion.

Our previous discussions are also kept up indefinitely, so these can be used as yet another resource for planning your own discussion of these titles: you can see which questions resonated more than others and also see if there are veins of discussion not captured in our guides.

The community forum is also a great place to ask questions specific to your book club, if you're looking for advice outside of our other resources.

BookBrowse continues to build on our book club resources each week, and while many of our resources are available for free, we're able to provide these resources because of our subscribing libraries and individual members.


Debugging Information
ColdFusion Server Developer 2021,0,13,330286
Template /lib/library_book_clubs/index.cfm
Time Stamp 31-May-26 07:46 PM
Locale en
User Agent Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
Remote IP 127.0.0.1
Host Name 127.0.0.1


Execution Time

Total Time Avg Time Count Template
40 ms 40 ms 1 top level /root/website/lib/library_book_clubs/index.cfm
21 ms 21 ms 1 /root/website/lib/blocks/app_layout.cfm
13 ms 13 ms 1 /root/website/site/blocks/layout/dsp_footer.cfm
12 ms 12 ms 1 /root/website/lib/blocks/app_globals.cfm
11 ms 11 ms 1 /root/website/adsystem/adsystem_mod.cfm
11 ms 11 ms 1 /root/website/adzones/showcase_track.cfm
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4 ms 4 ms 1 /root/website/lib/blocks/dsp_libinfo_left_border.cfm
4 ms 4 ms 1 /root/website/queries/qry_get_member_info.cfm
3 ms 2 ms 2 /root/website/actions/act_spider_tracker.cfm
3 ms 3 ms 1 /root/website/lib/blocks/dsp_libsidemenu.cfm
2 ms 2 ms 1 /root/website/queries/qry_get_member_classification_number.cfm
2 ms 2 ms 1 /root/website/site/blocks/layout/dsp_header.cfm
1 ms 1 ms 1 /root/website/act_libraryIPLogin.cfm
1 ms 1 ms 1 /root/website/lib/library_book_clubs/dsp_main.cfm
1 ms 1 ms 1 /root/website/site/blocks/layout/head.cfm
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0 ms 0 ms 1 /root/website/site/blocks/layout/google_tags.cfm
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0 ms 0 ms 1 /root/website/site/blocks/layout/main_menu.cfm
0 ms 0 ms 1 /root/website/site/blocks/layout/main_search.cfm
5 ms  STARTUP, PARSING, COMPILING, LOADING, & SHUTDOWN
45 ms  TOTAL EXECUTION TIME
red = over 250 ms average execution time


SQL Queries

spidercheck (Datasource=bookbrowse_com_new, Time=2ms, Records=1) in /root/website/actions/act_spider_tracker.cfm @ 19:46:08.008
SELECT	a.bot_number
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Parameter #2(cf_sql_varchar) = 127.0.0.1

get_member_info (Datasource=bookbrowse_com_new, Time=3ms, Records=0) in /root/website/queries/qry_get_member_info.cfm @ 19:46:08.008
select 	a.*, 
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    from members a, member_account_types b, member_chargetype c
	
    where a.member_account_type_number = b.member_account_type_number
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Query Parameter Value(s) -
Parameter #1(CF_SQL_INTEGER) = 0

get_current_ezine (Datasource=bookbrowse_com_new, Time=0ms, Records=1, Cached Query) in /root/website/queries/qry_get_current_ezine.cfm @ 19:46:08.008
select		top 1 ezine_number, ezine_dt, ezine_image, ezine_brief_description, ezine_introduction
from		ezines
where		ezine_active_flag = 1
and 		ezine_type_number = 4
and			ezine_dt < getdate()
order by 	ezine_dt DESC
get_member_classification_number (Datasource=bookbrowse_com_new, Time=2ms, Records=0) in /root/website/queries/qry_get_member_classification_number.cfm @ 19:46:08.008
select  	a.member_classification_number, b.member_classification_description
	FROM 		members a
	INNER JOIN 	member_classification b on b.member_classification_number = a.member_classification_number
	WHERE		a.member_number = ?
Query Parameter Value(s) -
Parameter #1(CF_SQL_INTEGER) = 0

get_ads (Datasource=bookbrowse_com_new, Time=5ms, Records=0) in /root/website/adsystem/adsystem_mod.cfm @ 19:46:08.008
SELECT		a.adid,	adweight
	FROM		adsystem a
	INNER JOIN 	ad_category_mapping b ON b.adid = a.adid
	WHERE		a.section = ?
	AND			a.active  = 1
	AND 		a.start_date <= GETDATE()
	
	AND (a.viewby LIKE '%n%' OR a.viewby = 'all')
            

	AND     (b.category_number IN (	SELECT	category_number
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									WHERE	book_number = ?)
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Query Parameter Value(s) -
Parameter #1(CF_SQL_VARCHAR) = showcase_track
Parameter #2(CF_SQL_VARCHAR) = 0
Parameter #3(CF_SQL_VARCHAR) = 0

get_ads (Datasource=bookbrowse_com_new, Time=3ms, Records=1) in /root/website/adsystem/adsystem_mod.cfm @ 19:46:08.008
SELECT	a.adid,	adweight
        FROM	adsystem a
        WHERE	a.section = ? 
        AND 	a.active  = 1 
        AND		a.start_date <= GETDATE()	
        
        AND (a.viewby LIKE '%n%' OR a.viewby = 'all')
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Query Parameter Value(s) -
Parameter #1(CF_SQL_VARCHAR) = showcase_track

get_type (Datasource=bookbrowse_com_new, Time=1ms, Records=1) in /root/website/adsystem/adsystem_mod.cfm @ 19:46:08.008
SELECT	a.start_date, a.adid, a.end_date, a.camp_views, a.image_name, a.alt_text, a.views, a.code, a.adsize
        FROM	adsystem a
        WHERE	a.adid = ?
Query Parameter Value(s) -
Parameter #1(CF_SQL_INTEGER) = 594


Scope Variables

CGI Variables:
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Debug Rendering Time: 13 ms