Librarian on Display: year of displays

Showing posts with label year of displays. Show all posts

Sunday, April 12, 2015

April: Earth Day Tree Display

For our Earth Day display this year I created a tree that spans across our bookcase. I created the trunk of the tree by laying full sheets of construction paper on the display and tracing a trunk design, cutting it out piece by piece so it matched. I made the trunk months before the display was put up, so I numbered each piece and took a picture of it up, to use as a guide when it was time to put up the actual display.

For the leaves I created several different variations and cut them out using the Silhouette Cameo. It took a lot of time to cut out all these leaves, in various colors, so I began several months ahead of time and did a sheet of leaves whenever I had a bit of time.

For the books I pulled all out Earth Day themed books to complete the display.

Monday, February 2, 2015

February: African American History Timeline Display

In honor of African-American History Month I created a unique timeline display. I saw an idea on Pinterest from a University library that had posted a timeline in their display case, for African-American History Month. I searched all over and was unable to find the timeline they had used. I created my own timeline template in Photoshop and I used facts, years and photos found on InfoPlease African-American History Timeline, History.com Black History Month, US Forest Services Timeline of Events in African American History, and NPR Black History Month Timeline.

The timeline covers events from 1694-2009. Each shelf covered six events in history, with the year it happened, a short summary of events and a picture of the event or person. For the books on display for each shelf, I chose books that corresponded to the events represented on that shelf.

For the title at the top of the display I cut the letters out using our Silhouette Cameo and glued them onto black strips of paper.

Here is the file, you can trace it in Silhouette Studio.

Friday, December 5, 2014

December: Read, Read As Much As You Can Display

It's Christmas time and the library has a new "Gingerbread Man" display. I called the display "Read, Read as Much as You Can. This was the perfect display for using our new Silhouette Cameo. Everything you see on the display besides the brown "gingerbread" border was made using the Silhouette. It took a while to create all the files and have the machine cut them, but the end result was amazing! For the books on the display I pulled all our books with candy, cakes, sweets... in the title.

Here are some of the files I used to make the candy, they are all pngs and will need to be brought into the Silhouette Studio and be traced, with high pass filter unchecked.

The Wrapped Candy

The lollipop, back, swirl and stick

Saturday, October 25, 2014

October: Halloween Slime Display

It's Halloween time and the library has some awesome displays this year! Our first display is covered in slime! I got this idea from Pinterest, it was easy to make and looks great in person.

I started off by getting a stack of lime green paper. I cut out five different variations of slime and then used those as templates to cut out approx 40 pieces of slime.

For the top three shelves I taped the slime of the inside top of the bookcase along with the outside edge. The bottom four shelves you couldn't see the inside well so I only did the outside.

I made a sign for the display saying "It came from the library." and I made a second sign for our website.

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.

Monday, September 22, 2014

September: Banned Books Week (Display 2) Books Under Fire

Our second Banned Books display was inspired by several displays I have seen on pinterest using "fire." I called it "Books Under Fire."

I started by creating a resource list in Destiny of as many banned books as I could find in our OPAC. I needed as many hardback books as possible because of the decor I was putting on the books. One of our parent volunteers then took the list and pulled several books. I picked 24 hardback books and began research each one to find a summary of when it was banned or challenged and a year. I made a template in Photoshop for banned books and one for challenged books. Depending on which option fit I would paste in the summary for that book.

I printed all the banned books onto yellow paper and all the challenged books onto dark peach paper (I was trying to stick to the colors of fire). I then cut the paper down to fit each book and covered the entire right side of each cover.

For the fire I googled fire clip art and enlarged two images to use as templates. I cut the fire out of red, orange and yellow construction paper.

I made a sign for the top of the display using fire graphics.