Week 15 Prompt
The first thing that popped into my mind was displays. Our fiction collection is broken into two papers fiction and paperbacks (mass-market paperbacks, specifically). After rearranging the collections and the shelves that house them, we were left with more short shelves than we knew what to do with. I suggested that since they were right in front of the fiction and paperback collections we make them displays dedicated to those collections. The theme of the displays rotates month to month, and right now the fiction display is "Yellow, is it me you're looking for?" which is chalked full of books with yellow covers. The paperback display on the paperback display is showing off regency romances. My coworkers curate two displays near circulation, one that just has to do with books relevant to programs during the month. And the other display near circulation is "staff picks" which has a bit of everything and why we love those books.
Lastly, we are starting genre-specific book clubs. I am going to be running a contemporary romance book club while my coworker will be running a mystery book club. We are hoping to drum up some interest in these two genres!
Danyelle, I love those shelf talkers! I've tried shelf talkers at my own library (glued little speech bubbles with appeal terms onto cardstock and stuck them into books to peek out). That's so cool that you guys are doing genre specific book clubs. Everyone has interest in reading what they love, or trying out new genres, so I can see this going really well!
ReplyDeleteIt is an added bonus that they are genres that both of us librarians really enjoy!
DeleteHi Dany,
ReplyDeleteI thought genre-specific book clubs were a great idea, too! I think it’s always really exciting to meet other people who have similar interests and exchange ideas and opinions with them. Having dedicated clubs would, I think, definitely serve to bring people together and promote more active engagement with a library’s collection, especially since people with similar tastes are always making recommendations to one another, which would lead to more people engaging with the collection while looking those titles up.
I liked the idea of a genre-specific book club because then you know what you are getting into. The book club that I attended at my local library switched out nonfiction and fiction with no real through line of reasoning.
DeleteYou came up with some great ideas. I totally forgot about shelf talkers when I was thinking about this question. We have some of those clear insert attachments that we use to delineate genres on our new shelf. But I can totally see how these could be used to highlight books in a collection.
ReplyDeleteI think they are great to inspire further exploration in a genre too! Like I rarely read sci-fi so if I saw a shelf talker with recommendations based on a book that I enjoyed I would be inclined to go check them out.
DeleteI love the idea of shelf talkers! My library has tried these on and off but they don't appear to get much interaction so we've taken them down. I always thought they were great passive RA activities and a way to get patrons more engaged with reading and expanding their reading palates.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad your library is creating genre specific book clubs! I've tried for the longest time, even before working at the library, to get them to create a mystery book club but it evidently hasn't gotten much engagement or participation in the past. Best of luck to your friend!!!
We overhauled just about every shelf talker that we had so, I am hoping they go over well.
DeleteLike a lot of the other people commenting, I also love the shelf talker idea! I think it would be a relatively easy way to introduce patrons to RA services without the pressure of a full RA interview (for both patron and staff, haha). How often do you update these? Do you keep them in the book (like as a bookmark), or tape them to the shelf, or something else?
ReplyDeleteWe recently updated the shelf talkers, and I would like to believe that we will continue to do so based on shifting trends and incoming books. And far as location, we have them taped to the shelf where the author's works are.
Delete