Oscar Themed Reading Lists and Display Ideas But Make It Interactive

During this time every year, between the release of Oscar nominations and the awards ceremony, libraries often do movie to book themed displays, and while these are great and popular, they are also boring. We've been there and done that. Why not make our Oscar season displays better by thinking more broadly about what we display AND making it interactive?

First, I want to address all of your gut instincts here-- why are you giving me more work Becky? This is one of those things we know works and we can do in our sleep. 

Ahh, but that is exactly the problem. We can do it in our sleep and it shows.

I am not telling you to NOT make a book to movie display, I am asking you to expand the parameters of your Oscar season displays.

Yes you should start with books to movies. Use this year's titles right up front (list here). But also, consider any movie that was nominated this year, for any reason, that has even a small connection to a book. And then expand to past years. And expand again to any books into movies, not just ones that got nominated.

But wait, there is more, why not also add memoirs or biographies of movie stars to the display? Or even movie adjacent titles like this list of Barbie books.

But Becky, I can her some of you saying already, that is not an Oscar display. What you are proposing is too broad in scope.

Is it?

I would argue that being more broad with the whole idea of an "Oscar Season" display means you have way more titles to choose from and you will attract a wider swath of readers. Again, calling this display simply "Oscar Season Reads," means you can do anything movie adjacent. 

We worry too much about our very specific display or lists themes. Instead we need to always think more broadly in order to be more inclusive.

But even more important than widening our scope in order to attract more readers is actually including reader feedback and participation in our displays.

I have spent the last year perfecting my argument about making RA more interactive by including this very easy "Conversation Starter to Display" post with a handout.

Every single time you post a list online or make a display in the building you should include a way for people to answer a question related to said list or display. In the post I have a few ideas on how to "ask."

But what should your question be for this "Oscar Season Reads" display? The key is to think broadly about what your question will be in order to set the stage for the breadth of the display itself. So I would suggest the conversation starter question being along the lines of: What is your favorite MOVIE book? 

Yes keep it that vague so that your patrons can interpret it as they want.

This question will lead people to pick adaptations of books to movies, yes, but it will also speak to your novelization fans (especially those who read SFF), celebrity biography/memoir fans, film buffs, budding filmmakers, etc.... The choices are so vast. And in fact, they are more than you could ever think of yourself. And that's the point. You are serving your community, not yourself. We should be asking them; these are their books-- not yours. (Something we also often forget.)

The results, as you can probably tell, will be broad. I know this scares some of you, and is against your instincts to keep your themes tight and controlled, but it will appeal to way more readers. And most importantly, it will allow you to get feedback as to what titles are popular with your readers. We often use circulation statistics to see what is most "popular." But circulation stats do not give us any insight into whether or not the people who checked those items out enjoyed said items. 

On top of giving us real feedback, conversation starter questions also allow us to keep our displays up longer. We can ask this question throughout our online spaces, in the building, and on bookmarks inside our holds from now until Oscar Awards night. And then the Monday after the awards, we can change the title on the display to "Our Patrons Oscar Season Suggestions." 

[This is a side note, but related: too often we take down our displays too early. For example, Halloween. We put up Horror for all of October and then on November 1st, we take it all down. But here's the thing, many people start seriously thinking about reading a Horror book late in October and on Nov 1, many realize they never read one. Having the display up one more week would capture more readers. It would also make people happy to know you thought of them and their situation, rather than making them feel bad about not taking advantage when the "should" have. Obviously that is not what you are trying to say by taking the Horror display down on 11/1, but it is how it can feel. Library anxiety is real. When you take it down on 11/1, people feel like they can't ask for the books right away again for fear of upsetting us. By the way, this is real feedback from real library users. I am not making this up.]

I cannot stress enough how successful these patron informed displays are at libraries who have started doing them with my help. People come into the library to see books they suggested on display. They bring in their family and friends to see them. They tell others that the library "listened to them." 

You want to show them (not just tell them) that you are there to help them find their next good read, then ask them to make suggestions and then put those suggestions up on display. Want them to value your services, make it about conversations. Conversations require that you prove you are listening, and then respond. And the act of engaging in conversations leads to relationships. People will feel more attached to the library and their services. That attachment will lead to more support, more visits, and more checkouts. All of which makes for happy Administrators and Boards and of course, gives you more job security. 

Now back to the beginning of this post, when I noted that some of you were upset that I was asking you to do more work. Maybe at the front end, yes, Until you figure out your templates for the bookmarks to go into hold items, how to structure your social media posts to gather answers to your conversation starter questions, and how to solicit suggestions at an in-library display as it is up, this will all take a little more time.

But in the long run, it is way less work because you will reuse all of it to extend the life of all of your displays, gather better feedback on our collections which allow us to buy the books people want to read, and increase door counts as patrons are happier with our services and bring in others. See, less time spent promoting books and more satisfied patrons.