For the children's librarian who, like myself, enjoys taking inspiration from others' ideas and crafting their own displays, here are some of my personal takes on online finds, with a few of my original ideas mixed in. Hope they inspire you!
Found on a fellow librarian's blog, the "Genre Dating Game" pairs nicely with the "Blind date with a book" idea found all around the web. Two things I'd like to change: the brown wrapping is awfully plain...I'm considering adding a little flair, if I find the time. Also, on a plain brown table the display is not so cute as I'd imagined. A pretty table cloth or even a runner could make it so much better!
Borrowing again from the ideas of others, I made a "bookman" named Rustly. My personal touches: I added a scarf, paper snowballs, and a fabric snow blanket, surrounded him with snowman books, and (since he was created at the end of a December) a party hat with "Happy New Year!" written on it. Fun display that's generated a lot of interest.
For Star Wars Reads Day and again for the new movie's premier, I decorated our children's room table with books from all children's reading levels, worksheets, finger puppets, signs, and finally, green sparkly tissue paper. The only drawback to my first display (pictured above) was that the books kept getting knocked over, which of course created a domino effect. For my second display, I laid them all down and had much better luck.
Probably due in part to its location in the library, this Halloween YA display did not generate a lot of interest. It was up for about a month, and in that time probably only resulted in about five check-outs, max. It was fun to make and I loved the premise, but if I tried it again I would probably place the voting box on the main circ desk and then point any interested patrons to the display.
Inspired by our local video store's "favorite movie" signs, I created this display, featuring local teachers' favorite books. I rotate them once the book checks out or after a few weeks of not checking it out. The teachers are happy to participate, and my children were excited to see teachers they know in the displays. Unfortunately, beyond lots of hits from posting and tagging the displays on Facebook, the displays have not resulted in as much interest (in the form of actually checking out older books with low circulation) as I'd like. I really enjoy the community connection though, and plan to continue the display.
Finally, some words on community event booths: This was from the children's fair at our local hospital. Keep in mind I had just started my job as youth librarian, and threw this together in a short amount of time. Still, it generated a lot of interest and I connected with most of the event-goers, from what I could tell. Included in the display: library pamphlets and a story time flyer, some of my kids' stuffed bears (the upcoming story time theme was "Teddy Bear Picnic"), plain lunch bags with cute library-themed bag tags to color and glue on, crayons, glue, and craft trays, children's and adult books related to the story time theme, stickers, temporary tattoos, bookmarks, coloring books, and coloring pages for kids to take home, and a sign made by my predecessor, using a huge heavy poster board and picture book dust jackets.
Please feel free to share your own display ideas in the comments!
