On creating Library Displays...

One of the fun things about my job is creating library displays.   During the summer, it was weekly, but during the rest of the year, it is every three weeks...   it includes both children's and adult displays...  and they are up for a week.

What do displays do?  They actively boost circulation.   They bring books out from the stacks that people don't know we have...   (it also, to me, highlights gaps in the collection...what do you mean we don't have Rapunzel?  Or we only have ONE book on this? ARGH!)

But it also makes you have to be creative.   You don't just take the easy path, sometimes....

You have to think, ok, what are people taking out? What are people asking for?

For instance: people were taking out the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy.  It was flying, FLYING off the shelves.

Now, if I'd been over at the Main Library, I would have pulled some sci-fi/fantasy S&M books, well-written, good things.  J. Carey, or S.M. Stirling (yes, that is his name)..   but I was still able to pull a display out, since we had "The sexual adventures of Catherine M" (kind of a modern "story of O"), a book of racy/funny ads, a book about an affair, etc.

What I'll also do is pull out Chase, which is a book that details every single holiday that goes on for each day, if its a big one, such as "Patriots Day", or a small one...  but that often, particularly with adults, gives me an idea....

For instance this week, in adults, I did:

Agatha Christie's birthday
Tolkien Week (which we can supplement with Tolkien-inspired stuff)
Help with Homework--we have some calculus, English, French, etc books on the shelf in non-fic, its a good way to showcase them.    And easy to refill too.
Fast Meals--a parent asked, a couple weeks ago, about recipe books with quick meals...

There was one more, but I'm blanking....

And here is a picture:

Citizenship Day!  Hah!  Right on top.

For Children, I started with Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is coming up this week...
Then went to Princesses, Policemen, and Pies.    And I had Princesses and Pirates for older kids as well...

Some of the more interesting displays I've done are :Hitler and Friends (for adults), since we had a number of interesting biographies and fiction books on Winifred Wagner, Eva Braun, etc...

Timing is important too...about mid-August I did a display on potty training in kids, including a couple of cute tushie books we have...

There are displays I would love to do, but doubt I'd be able to:

A really political display.   This one is because we don't have the balance in our collection.  And I really don't want to keep Ann Coulter's books or Rush Limbaugh's books around.  Ugh. (Sorry Dan)    And our displays, if they are at all political, need to be balanced.

A children's display, for older kids, on growing up and maturing...maybe we could do this in the teen section?   The problem is that a parent would probably complain if it was in the regular section, and we don't get so much of the teen traffic in the fall...  we get our teens in the summer.

I wish I could do a better sci-fi display.  I wish I could showcase some of my favorite fantasy authors...

There are some fallbacks, for doing a display, if you really can't think of anything else:

Color: books of all one color--green for spring or st patrick's day.

Cookbooks: bread and soup for fall/winter

Gardening.  If you do gardening in winter, people go "oooh" because they want color and light and pretty...  you don't put out gardening books in summer, so much...

Actually, I have a picture of the "Shades of Grey" display I did, which was one of the first official ones I did as an "Associate".  My boss did a blog post on it:

http://farmingtonlibctbarney.blogspot.com/2012/06/check-it-out.html

It was "shades of grey", featured author (Elizabeth Berg), kitchen/garden tour, journalists, and DaVinci Code readalikes.