September: Genre Display

At the end of the last school year we completed our fiction genre-fying project. All the books were labeled and organized by genre. To start the new year, I decided to showcase the fact that our fiction section is now organized by genre with a genre display.

I used two of our bookcases to showcase the display. We have ten genres so I used five on one and five on the other. For the decor I used the same fonts that were used for the genre labels

I printed them out very large on colored paper (the colors of the actual labels) and then cut out each letter and taped it to the display, one genre per shelf.

I filled the shelf associated with each genre with books by that genre only. There was an extra shelf at the top and bottom of each bookcase, so I filled those with a mix of genres and added a sign on one bookcase that said "What's Your Favorite Genre?" and on the other bookcase that said "Our Fiction Section is Not Organized By Genre"

September: Facebook Display

It is the start of a new school year and new displays! I found an awesome interactive Facebook themed display on pinterest from The Punny Librarian and since the Library has a dedicated Facebook page I thought this was a great idea to begin the new school year.

Students were encouraged to "Like" their favorite books by taking a "Like" bookmark, provided on the display, and placing it in their favorite books on the shelves in the stacks. In the top left corner of the display I put a sign explaining the interactive aspect of the display. My sign is only about 8", which is all the room I had, in the Punny Librarian's Display she created a very large sign, which would have been great if I had the space.

I then made several signs using Facebook logos and icons that I found on google and placed them all over the display.

I created the bookmarks by putting the "like" thumbs up on the top of the bookmark and then the word "Like" below it. Below that I told the students to like our Facebook page and provided the link. To hold the bookmarks I made a small sign and folded in the sides and base and taped it to the display:

May: Student Recommended and Favorite Books

Back in April, during National Library Week, we had students write down their favorite books and also recommend books the library did not already own. Every May we then create a display (or displays) that feature all of these books.

To begin we took the lists of books students had recommended and listed as favorites. You might remember the sheets I created for National Library Week:

I then searched our catalog for all the books. If we had them I added those books to a resource list. The books we did not already own I added to a wishlist on Amazon. After I checked that the books were appropriate I ordered them and our wonderful parent volunteers cataloged the books once they came in.

The second step was to type up labels for each book that was recommended. The labels have the name of the student who recommended the book along with a sentence "This book was suggested by.....". I then printed up all the labels and stuck them on light green post-it notes that I trimmed down (not really necessary but easier to remove from the books once the display comes down).

One of our Library Student Assistants came up with the decor idea. She suggested silhouettes that had quote bubbles that gave the illusion that the silhouettes were speaking. In the quote bubbles would be sayings like "I recommended TITLE OF BOOK" or "TITLE is my favorite book." This was such a great suggestion. I did a google search and found several different silhouettes that I brought into Photoshop and sized to approx 6.5". I then printed out all the silhouettes and we cut them out. I made sure to make an even amount of male vs female silhouettes. I then created some quote bubbles in Photoshop and using the lists I had of student recommended books I typed up the different sayings (being sure to pick an even number of boys and girls). I then printed out the bubbles and wrote either a G or a B on the back of each so I could match the right gender with the right gender silhouette.Here are some blank quote bubbles you can add your own text to.

Once it was time to put up the display I put two silhouettes on each shelf and added the quote bubbles. For the top of the display I made two large quote bubbles that said "Student Recommended" in one and "& Favorite Books" in the other.

That's all there is to it!

February: Words Have Power Display (Black History Month)

February is Black History Month, we created two displays to spotlight famous African Americans and events in history. Our first display is titled "Words Have Power." I wanted to create a display that focused on biographies and famous speeches. We pulled all our biographies on famous African Americans and then we pulled books on famous speeches (We had a few Martin Luther King Jr. books with his speeches). To fill in the display we also added books on how to write speeches.

The signage for the display was simple. I took keywords that described the people spotlighted in the display. I used the following colors to write the words: red, green, black and yellow.I then cut them out and taped them around the display.

 For the display sign I just wrote out "Words Have Power" in the color scheme above.



 

Please feel free to use any of the signage for your own display!