April: Graphic Novels Display

We are spotlighting our graphic novels for the next two weeks with this fun display! Our library parent volunteer pulled as many graphic novels as she could fit for the display. Then it was time to decorate!

I created some signage using Photoshop and printed it out. I was inspired by several displays I saw on Pinterest.

Then one of our student volunteers cut out the graphics. She then used construction paper and cut out similar shapes slightly larger to put behind the graphics, it helped give a more 3D effect.

For the top of the display I cut out large ZAP letters. I first made up a smaller version in Photoshop and printed it out, then I traced around the letters on construction paper to make them approx 7" tall.

There are so many things you could do with this display, I just love how it turned out!

Please feel free to use any of the templates.

April: Earth Day Display

April 22nd was Earth Day and the library created two displays to highlight the libraries "Earth Day" inspired books.

The display was really quick to put together. After the last week celebrating National Library Week and all the events we held, there was not much time to put together a huge display. I created two signs for the displays, one for each book case. They are really simple:

I then cut out some clouds, butterflies and snails and decorated the bookcase with them:

That's all there was to it, please feel free to use the signs or template.

Cataloging: Equity and Inclusion ( E & I ) Project

    Currently we are working on genre-fying our fiction collection. At the suggestion of our middle school librarian we have also chosen to add equity and inclusion information to the MARC tags of each title in our fiction collection. The library is an important part of our school's commitment to equity and inclusion and we strive to grow our collection to mirror the needs and wants of our school community. Our hope is that by adding specific information on gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity and more,  we can help students, faculty and parents access books in our collection that may have been overlooked in the past. We started this project back in October and I have already found the information useful for displays, student research and summer reading recommendations. Once the project is complete we will run reports to find holes in our collection and take necessary steps to make our collection more complete.

 We use Follett Destiny and when we catalog we import records that are relatively complete. Our parent volunteers work hard to add specific subject-headings that correspond to popular topics and lessons. Along with all this information we are also adding a specific list of categories to better embrace equity and inclusion. 

We began by creating a list of categories we felt would help us and our students embrace equity and inclusion. The list was very long and we had to combine areas and cut areas that we felt would never be searched for. Here is the list of categories and information we decided on:

A. E & I Categories/Information:

A. Protagonist Gender

1. Gender: Male

2. Gender: Female

3. Gender: Questioning

4. Gender: Transgender

         B. Family Type

                                1. Family: Nuclear

                                2. Family: Single Parent

                                3. Family: Divorced

                                4. Family: Parent Died

                                5. Family: Adopted

         C. Family Type 2 (May not apply to all)

                                  1. Family: Same Sex Parents

                                 2. Family: Only Child

                                 3. Family: Orphan

         D. Sexual Orientation

                            1. Sexuality: Lesbian

                                 2. Sexuality: Gay

                              3. Sexuality: Bisexual

                                   4. Sexuality: Straight

          E. Race/Ethnicity

                               1. Ethnicity: Latino

                                    2. Ethnicity: Caucasian

                                    3. Ethnicity: African-American

                                    4. Ethnicity: Pacific Islander

                                    5. Ethnicity: Asian

                                    6. Ethnicity: Native American

                                    7. Ethnicity: Middle Eastern

                                    8. Ethnicity: Multicultural

                                    9. Ethnicity: Indian

                                    10. Ethnicity: African

           F. Geographic Location

                               1. Location: North America

                                    2. Location: South America

                                    3. Location: Asia

                                    4. Location: Africa

                                    5. Location: Europe

                                    6. Location: Australia

                                    7. Location: Arctic Regions

           G. Religion

                               1. Religion: Atheist

                                    2. Religion: Christian

                                    3. Religion: Muslim

                                    4. Religion: Hindu

                                    5. Religion: Buddhist

                                    6. Religion: Jewish

            H. Disability

                                1. Disability: Physically Disabled/Illness

                                     2. Disability: Learning Disabled

Determining which MARC tags to use:
Our library uses Follett Destiny. Before we began entering information into the catalog, I contacted Follett to be sure we were using the correct MARC tag. I also followed up with a few google searches to be sure I was not missing something with the cataloging part of the project. I determined that we should use the 690 tag. It was repeatable and searchable through Destiny. For the indicator we used 5. At the advice of Follett, on the second line we used our school code with the 2 indicator. (Follett said out school code would be useful when creating reports). For each category entry that the title contains we add a new 690 tag. (We are entering the information exactly as shown : Gender: Male, we are doing this for two reasons: 1. If you do a keyword search on Destiny and just type in Male or type in gender the book will come up, along with any other books in your collection (fiction and non-fiction) that contains the word Male in the title/summary.... 2. If you only want to search your collection for fiction books that we have determined have a male protagonist you can search in a keyword search "Gender: Male" and only those books come up (There is a slight flaw here that you could run across a non-fiction book that has the words "gender" and the words "male" in their summary, you could also do a keyword search for "Gender: Male School code" and then you will be positive only the books you determined were male protagonists are found.) You can also do a bibliographic report using Gender: Male and your school code to get the specific books you want as well.

Finding information for each title:

Please keep in mind that we are completing this project simultaneously with our genre-fying project, To add the genre information we are already editing the MARC tags. Once we have added the genre information we then move on to adding the E & I information. Once everything has been added we save the title and update the call number. We have been using Goodreads.com as our main source of finding the genre. Once we have searched for the title in Goodreads we also stop and read the summary of the book. We then pull any E & I information given in the summary and we use that to update the MARC tags. If we can not find enough E & I information on Goodreads we are also using Titlewave, Shelfari, Amazon, Library of Congress and anywhere else (such as our local public library). If all else fails we pull the book off the shelf and read the back cover.  Our goal is to get at least three categories of E & I information for every title. The more complete the better.

April: National Library Week!

It's finally here! National Library Week! I am so excited for what we have planned during National Library Week. I wanted to share our ideas with all of you!

First we have our April checkout raffle. Anyone who checks out a book during the month of April is entered in a raffle to win a $25 iTunes gift card. The more checkouts you have the more entries you get. We do not actually write down student names or make them sign a sheet or anything. At the end of the month I will run a report on Destiny for who checked out books and then we will do a random pick.


Second: Post-it Note Art, I already wrote up a post about our post-it note art contest. The first three students to guess the design win cute prizes related to the images they are creating. You can find out more here: http://librarianondisplay.blogspot.com/2014/04/crafts-post-it-note-art.html

Third: Share 2 or more of your favorite books that you have read and loved and get a healthy snack! We are asking students to tell us what their favorite books are. These can be books we already have in the library or books we don't have. We will be turning this into a display the first week of May. Here is the signage and signout sheet:

Fourth: Recommend a book and get a healthy snack! Every year we do  recommend a book  for National Library Week. The student has to recommend a book that the library does not already have (and that is appropriate). They then get a healthy snack. We will then purchase pretty much every book that is recommended, as long as it is YA and appropriate (no elementary level books or Fifty Shades of Grey). The first week of May we do a display where we feature the books and put the student who recommended it's name on the book. Here is the signage and signout sheet:

Fifth: Create a bookmark for the library. Students can design up to three bookmarks for the library. We provide bookmarks to students when they check out a book. The library picks one winner and they will have their bookmark be featured in the library for a year. The winner gets a $25 Amazon gift card. Here is the signage and template:

Sixth: Free Books! Every year we save books that have been weeded or are duplicates. Maybe they were donated and we already had them.... Whatever the reason we have books to give away to the kids. We place them on a cart with a free books sign and let them go wild!:

Besides these six events we also have our interactive displays: Book Spine Poetry and Quotes, Quotes, Quotes. It is a great week to be in the library! Please feel free to use any of the signage or ideas. (The bookmark sign has our library name on it but you could easily replace that in Paint with your own image).

April: Quotes, Quotes, Quotes Display

You may have seen the article on Buzzfeed featuring "28 of the Most Beautiful Libraries in the World" along with a quote about libraries on each image. I first saw this article on Facebook and I shared it on our library facebook page. A few weeks later it came to my attention again from our Library Director. The middle school librarian suggested we turn it into a display, such a great idea. I went ahead and created the following display with it as my inspiration.

I started by creating a resource list of every book the library had by the authors who's quotes were featured in the article. We only had about 22 of the 28 (although Mark Twain is repeated). I then found books in our collection on quotes and added these. Our library parent volunteer is so helpful when it comes to displays, she pulled all the books from the list and found more books that fit the overall theme of the display.

I then typed up all the quotes from the article that we had matches of books by author for. This was tedious, but necessary for what I had in mind for the display. (I am sure I could have searched for the quotes and then copy and pasted them, but hindsight....) I created quote bubbles in Photoshop and made them different colors. I put one quote in each bubble:

 I also typed up some of the quotes by "anonymous" to use as extra decor. I then printed out blank quote bubbles to place around the edge of the display. Out goal was to get students to write their favorite quote about libraries in the blank quote bubbles. I wrote in a few of the bubbles directions for the students to write their own quote:

A volunteer and I cut out all the quotes and quote bubbles. She then taped the matching quote to the corresponding book by the author. We taped all the blank quote bubbles and the ones with the directions around the edges of the display. We taped the three anonymous quotes around the edges as well. I then wrote a quote in one of the bubbles and so did our parent volunteer (To show the students what we meant).

For signage I created one that told the students about the display and asked them to write a quote, it also had a QR code that links to the article we were inspired by.

To advertise our display I made a second image for use on our website and facebook page:

Please feel free to use any of the signage. I hope this inspires you to view the article and create a display!

April: Book Spine Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, to celebrate we have created a book spine poetry display. This is our second year creating this display and it has only grown in popularity with our students. Last year we dedicated one bookcase to the display and by the end of the two week display period we had piles of books sitting on nearby tables because they wouldn't fit in the bookcase. This year we dedicated two bookcases to the display, it has been up for one week so far and we only have two spots left for poems, crazy!

The first time we created the display none of the students had ever heard of book spine poetry before. I wanted to encourage them to give it a try and also show examples of what a book spine poem was. I accomplished this in three ways. First I created a book spine poetry board on our library pinterest page. I then created a sign that said "need inspiration?" and I provided a QR code that would take you to the book spine poetry examples.:

Second I made fake books out of construction paper and then I wrote titles of books on them and stacked them to make fake poems. I taped these fake books to the back of the bookcase shelves, it was a great way to show examples while leaving the shelves clear for the students work.

The third thing I did was make small quote bubbles that said things like "place your poem here", "Create a poem", "Your poem goes here".... Just another way to encourage the students. I unfortunately did not save the quote bubbles with the text in it, but I did save the blank ones. You can open these in Paint and write your own words of encouragement:

Once a student created a poem they would put their name on it. I made small pockets out of construction paper and put a note on it saying "Name cards" and then in some of the quote bubbles I wrote "don't forget to add your name," I then made some note cards for them to write their names on and then place the card on top of the poem.

For signage I wrote out letters saying "Make a Poem" for the top of the bookcase. and then I had a sign explaining the display on one of the shelves.

This has been an extremely successful display. I hope you give it a try at your library. Please feel free to use any of my signage!

Crafts: Post-it Note Art

Post-it note art is something I have wanted to try for the past year. Ever since I first came across pictures of offices and libraries with post-it note art on their walls I thought it would make a wonderful project for our library. This year we decided to incorporate Post-it note art into National Library Week. There are several images available online that are basically ready to go. These images are mostly of old school video games like Mario Brothers and PacMan. Although they are really cool looking, I wanted images that related to the library. I was unable to find these ready made, so I created them myself.

I decided to make Harry Potter, Gandalf (Lord of the Rings) and Ironman (we have Ironman comic books). I didn't want to give the students the full design, it seemed too easy and they would be finished too quickly. Instead I separated the image into 10 images. This way ten students or ten teams of students could participate. Each team would just put up the colors that their image shows and the design will slowly be built as more and more colors get put up. We decided to give out prizes to the student who guessed what characters they were creating before the design was complete.

I made a grid on a large sheet of butcher paper. The grid is 3' high by 5.5' wide. I then drew in 3" x 3" squares (the Post-its we are using are the 3" x 3" kind). However, you could use the images below and go with a 2" x 2" post-it, just adjust your grid accordingly. I purchased all the post-its at Office Depot. I did have to manipulate the colors from the original colors of the images. You will see in the images provided that they show the post-it color not the original color so the students wouldn't get confused. (Light grey became light blue, royal blue became blue, Brown became orange, peach became pink) I was unable to find black post-it notes so I ended up just cutting out 3" x 3" squares from black construction paper  (black seemed too important to the design to replace with an alternative color).



Here are the 10 images:

 The Post-it Note art project was such a big hit that I put a second grid up. I didn't have time to create brand new images as I did above but if you search online you can find some old school video games like PacMan and Mario. I then brought the images into Photoshop and tweaked them to fit my grid and to make sure that there were no post-it's that needed to be cut like in the first images.I then just hung the photos up above the grid and handed the students stacks of post-its.

Please feel free to use the images to create your own post-it note art!