March: She Believed She Could So She Did, Women's History Month Display

March is Women's History Month, for our display I found some awesome propaganda for and against Suffrage. If you do a search on Pinterest for Women's Suffrage, you will find many options. I took the different posters and comics and made one side of the display all comics for Suffrage and the other side against it. I originally had all the shelves with comics as well but it was a bit overwhelming once the display was up. I cut out the quote for the display name using the Silhouette Cameo.

February: Blind Date With A Books, Take Three! Display

It's that time of year again, Blind Date With A Book! Everyone's favorite interactive display! This year I chose to do a flower theme instead of a heart theme as in the years before. With our new Silhouette Cameo I was able to cut out dozens of 3D flowers, making this display gorgeous!!

Each book was wrapped in either a metallic purple or metallic green wrapping paper. I cut out vines and flowers to put on the books, along with either a leaf or flower that gave a brief description of the book, genre, theme.

As with the last two attempts at this display I used similar signage to explain the display and how it worked. I numbered the back of each wrapped book and provided a signout sheet for students to checkout the books.

You can read more detailed instructions  in my first Blind Date post

Hope you liked this version of the display!

December: Library Scrabble Display

I came up with an idea to turn the game of Scrabble into an interactive library display. I wasn't sure if the display would be popular with my students but it turned out to be a total hit! Here is all the details so you can create a display of your own!

Before I explain each step, let me give you an overview of the scrabble "game" display. Each book was wrapped in a paper bag and had a scrabble tile taped to the front of the bag. Because the books were completely covered I wanted to give a couple of clues as to what the book was in the bag, in case a student wanted to check one out. I chose to use the first letter of the book title as the scrabble tile letter. For the point value of the scrabble letter I color coded it to represent one of 10 genres. I then created the different genres out of scrabble tiles, in their "color" and used those as decor. Any student could come up to the display, rearrange the scrabble tiles (books) into a word and then they would write that word on a clipboard that I provided next to the display. If the word had not already been used that day they got a cookie. The highest scoring word each day won a book. You could checkout one of the scrabble books, I provided numbers on the back of each scrabble book and a sign out sheet to allow students to check out the books. If you checked out a book you got to choose the next scrabble book that went on the display, and you got first dibs at spelling a new word, thus having an advantage and the best chance of getting the highest score that day.

How To:

Step 1: I complied a list of letters that could be used to spell the most amount of words. I repeated some letters, I tried to get a list of at least 34 books to begin my display and to have a back up of books (this will come in handy later). I then went through the stacks (I chose to only use fiction books) and found books that began with each letter.

Step 2: Using a guide I found online, that gave me the point value for each letter, I made up "Scrabble tiles" for each letter. Here are the ones I used, please feel free to use them:

You will notice the point value is color coded to match our 10 genres.

Step 3: I made up decor to allow students to easily identify the genres:

Step 4: I cut out the scrabble tiles and taped them to brown paper bags. I wrote a number on the back of each bag.

Step 5: I wrote the barcode of the book and the number on the bag that matched the book, on a spreadsheet, I then put the book in the bag.I put a signout sheet on the reference desk for students to write the number on the bag when checking out the book.

Step 6: I made up signs explaining how to play the game and how you would get a cookie for playing.

Step 7: I hung a sheet next to the display for students to write their words on:

Step 8: For the top of the display I made a Library Scrabble sign:

That's it! The display was a lot of fun, try it at your library!

October: It's A Mystery Display

October is National Mystery Month! There are several great ideas for mystery displays on Pinterest, Google and personal blogs, it's hard to pick just one! Our Library Advisory Board students had asked for more displays like Blind Date With A Book. They liked choosing books based on other facts besides the cover. I incorporated this idea into our new display, It's A Mystery.

Did you know that there are more than 8 types of sub-genres for mysteries? I did not. For this display I chose to focus on only five sub-genres: Historical, Crime, Thriller, Detective and Romantic. We Genrefied our fiction collection last year and it allowed me to pull reports on sub-genres very easily. I made five resource lists of books and printed them out. I made an excel spreadsheet of all the barcodes for each book and numbered them 1-27. A volunteer pulled the books and one of our Student Library Assistants put the books into brown paper bags, wrote the number I had given on the back of the bag, and kept them sorted into their five piles. This process took much less time than wrapping each book in paper like we did for the Blind Date With A Book display.

I created five different "logos" to represent each sub-genre. These were printed and cut out as decorations for the display.

Each "Logo" had a symbol to represent the sub-genre, I printed out these symbols and our student assistant glued the corresponding symbol to the correct pile of books. This was the only clue students got to know what book was in the bag.

I made a signout sheet so students could write the number on the back of the bag and their name to checkout the book. This way they remained completely in the dark about what book was inside the bag until after it was checked out.

I made signage explaining how to check out the book and put it on the display.

For decorations I used the "logos" I had made, along with text saying "It's A Mystery." I used question marks and the classic Who? What? Where? How? Why? When? and cut them out and put them around the display.

Overall it was not nearly as popular as the Blind Date With A Book display. I think it was too difficult for students to know what was in the bag and they shied away from checking them out. If I did it again I think I would include something like "If you like....." to the front of each bag and a better clue as to what is inside.  I have an idea for a Scrabble display using books that are wrapped, we will see if that is more popular.

October: Black and White and Read All Over Display

This month I decided to take all of our black and white cover books and feature them in a display. This was by far the easiest display I have done, and it took very little planning. I recommend using this when you don't have the time to plan an elaborate display.

I went through the fiction section and noted down the barcodes of every book that had only black and white (or white) in the cover. I then entered all the barcodes into a resource list so one of our parent volunteers could pull the books the morning of our display change.

For the decoration I measured the shelf and made black and white boxes in Photoshop that I then printed out, cut out and taped to cover the shelf edge. Feel free to use them:


For the signage I wrote out "Black and White and Read All Over" and then cut out each word and taped it to the display.

Overall it really turned out great!

September: Banned Books Week (Display 3) Banned Books

For the last Banned Books display I decided to make paper chains with locks. One of our Student Library Assistants cut out several strips of black construction paper and stapled them together to form long paper chains. I drew locks onto construction paper and cut them out and then taped them onto the chains.

I also made up caution signs in Photoshop and cut them out and placed them on some of the books.

I saw several displays on Pinterest that were using the ALA's Forbidden graphic on their books. I liked how it looked so I printed out several and pasted them onto the books as well.

I made up a sign for the display using the ALA graphics for this year's Banned Books Week:

I printed out three images using quotes and pictures I found on Buzzfeeds "11 Quotes from Authors on Censorship and Banned Books" 

For the top of the bookcase I made a Banned Books sign using ALA graphics: