Call to Action: Make Your Displays Less Fancy And More Inclusive

Today’s Call to Action is unique in that it is asking you to do LESS work. It is also one of those things I say in person all the time, but don’t reiterate here on the blog quite enough but I was reminded of the topic by this post from Teen Librarian Toolbox entitled, “Rethinking Book Displays-- Again.”

In this post Karen discusses and then tests the theory that if you make you displays too pretty, patrons   think they aren’t supposed to remove the books in them to check out.

I have heard this for years from library staff. When they make their displays super nice and beautiful nothing moves, yet when they just throw up a few books with a quickly made Word headline, the books fly off the shelves.

People are constantly upset that their hard work goes unnoticed, but as I have seen anecdotally and as Karen has shown at her specific location in the post, the problem is more nuanced than that.

For many year, things on display at the library were not able to be checked out. Today’s adults grew up being told not to touch things in the library. For example. as late as the early 2000s, a library near me ,super famous for its RA Service, used to keep all of their new books in a glass enclosed display for the first week they were out, meaning no one could actually read them the first week. You could only look at them longingly and place holds.

When patrons see a fancy display they don’t want to “mess it up.” In some cases they have been trained not to. As a profession we were so awful about people not touching things for so many years, people are not used to being put ahead of the books in our priority list. You think I am kidding but I still have to tell library workers to chill out; that the books are not theirs to protect, but rather, the books are there to be checked out, as easily as possible, by the public-- who are the ones that own them. We are not book police, yet some patrons still see us this way [and some library workers still act this way].

Patrons do appreciate the hard work you put into a gorgeous display and they don’t want to upset the beauty by checking a title out, or risk making us upset at them. On the other hand, if we just quickly put up some books with a title, more casually, they flock to the display and grab the books to take home. Why? Because it is clear to them that you want the books to move. Yes, the less effort you put in, the higher the chance the books will be checked out.

This is also why I advocate for using both display furniture for our displays and casually grouping books in less formal areas. The ones on a formal piece of furniture are great, but again, if taking a book will leave an empty space, I have literally had people ask me if it was okay to take that title; for that reason alone, that it would leave a hole in the display. Again, patrons think clearing a display will upset us. But on open desk tops, in the middle of shelves, at the ends of shelves...those books go. Sometimes, it has nothing to do with the topic of the display or even the specific titles, but rather how we put them physically on display that matters most.

Try it for yourself. Put up the same grouping of books in different locations and with differing amounts of props. Or follow what Karen did in her article.

Now, if you like making fancy displays, great. Don’t stop. Some of my colleagues love that crafty party of their job. Just make sure you add signage that says, “Please check me out to make room for another great title,” or something like that.

But, if you are like me, and hated the making things pretty part of your job, stop fretting about it. Just get some books from the stacks pull out and grouped together.

But now, use that extra time you have away from the glue gun to make the content of your displays more inclusive. Make sure you have books from multiple genres and from authors of all backgrounds in each and every display. In other words, LGBTQ books can be in every display, not just those about LGBTQ issues. This will take less time than making a fancy display AND it will also present a better representation of the range of titles available on your topic.