Building Displays That Prioritize Sharing

Earlier this week I had a post where I laid out the very simple mission behind everything we do. The question to ask yourself if what you are doing is worth the effort-- Does this prioritize the sharing of your collection? And to take it a step further-- Am I sharing the most items to the widest swath of readers with this action?

Displays are a standard tactic of passive RA. We put books up face out to give patrons a smaller universe of books from which to make their choice. 

However, displays are also the place where too much effort is wasted-- both physical effort and mental effort. Let me explain.

First, we make it harder on ourselves than it has to be when it comes to displays as we often come up with display topics or parameters that are too narrow.

When you get uber specific-- you are not only making it harder or yourself, you are hurting you readers. Broad displays with a wide variety of titles show your readers that there is a book for them there on the display (and by default) in the library. The more readers who can see themselves and their reading tastes in the highest number of your displays, the better you are doing at prioritizing sharing your collection.

When you are broad in your topic for the display books will fly off the self because more people will see it is for them. And it will be much easier to fill it as it empties out. It also makes it easier for you  to find more diverse titles-- across identities and genres-- to fill each display.

The displays I will feature below will help you think more broadly, but first, I need to get to my second time waster (and many of you aren't going to like it).

Second, some of you over decorate your book displays. Book displays should be the books on whatever open space you have. You do not need special furniture. Books on the end of a range or single shelf are a display. And that topic can be simply a small sign that says "Hey, check me out!"

That's it. Books. On an open space. With a sign that refers to a general topic (described above)-- WITHOUT DECORATIONS. Maybe some key words or a post it note on the books themselves. BUT NOTHING ELSE.

When you spend too much time making everything pretty with decorations-- you are not only taking time from what you should be doing-- sharing your collection-- you are actually taking the attention off the books. Also, when you make a display to fussily pretty and organized, people are less willing to take a title off the shelf for fear it will "mess things us." I have even heard people say to an overly decorative displays, "I'd love to try that book but I don't think we are allowed to take it."

I don't care if you like the crafting part of the job because it is actually NOT PART OF THE JOB. Find another outlet. 

If this section of the post is hitting too close to home and/or you are currently arguing with me, I am 100% talking to you. And no, there is nothing you can say that makes your point of view correct. Move on.

Now on to the resources you can use to help you build the best displays-- both for your readers and in terms of getting the best return on your investment because you absolutely do not have to come up with these ideas on your own, nor should you. We use resources as library workers. It's our superpower. 

Below are my favorite resources for finding broad topics to build displays with some commentary from me on how best to use them:

• Conversation Starters to Displays
• This is my concept of asking your staff and patrons natural language, general questions and then using their answers to build displays. So your topics are things like-- these titles surprised our readers or these titles made our readers laugh.
• LJ Display Shelf
• Library Journal has pages and pages of posts with books on a variety of topics. They include a spreadsheet of titles that you can use to fill a display shelf-- big or small. And there is a great archive of options.
• Passively Recommending Books Blog
• My colleague Lila Denning is the current expert on building better book displays. She presents for ALA eCourses and PCI webinars regularly. And she blogs many of her best ideas.
• LibraryReads Archive
• When in doubt, put up a library workers all over the country love these books display and fill it with the hundreds of titles found in the LibraryReads archive. Titles got back to 2013 and this idea is evergreen. You can do this anytime of year and readers will love it. And don't forget the Hall of Fame authors as well. You will NEVER run out of titles.
• Book Riot
• They have lists every single day that are perfect for you to adapt with titles that you think fit the topic.
• PW's Best Books Database
• PW has an easy to use list of the Best Books and their Summer Reads always available with easy access to the backlist. Use it to make a general- "Great Reads You May Have Missed" display anytime.
• NPR's Books We Love
• Similar to PW above, you have a lists to hundreds of titles that have already been vetted. However, the NPR resource has tags which you can use to make displays. For example, choose the "It's All Geek to Me" tag for each of the 12 years and you have dozens of books for a fun, varied display.

Finally, I want to remind everyone that we need to be promoting only the books people would not find without our help. Do not showcase the books they already know about. That is another waste of time, but you can click through to read why.