Readers' advisory services take two forms, direct and indirect. While much research has examined the interaction between a library staff member and a library patron, the equally important area of indirect readers' advisory has been neglected. This study describes a questionnaire survey of public library patrons in three branches of the Durham County Public Library system in North Carolina. The survey was conducted to determine if genre fiction reading interests in a local library system reflect common appeal characteristics of those genres and if adult fiction readers use the same vocabulary to describe and talk about fiction genres as do librarians
