Unshelving August - Making a Plan in Advance

It’s hard to believe that it’s already time to think about planning for August collection promotions. Exactly which displays, online posts, or other passive readers advisory themes you pick will depend upon your library and patrons. 

From Web Holidays, there are daily, weekly, and monthly options. There aren’t any major holidays to consider so that leaves much of the month open. You may have to schedule your displays around the ending of summer reading for youth and adults. 

Given that there are many food related celebrations, one option is to group together several of them and set up a display with cookbooks and fiction with the various food types in the title. This would be a great display to mirror with your youth collection. Cookbooks are popular with children in my library when they are promoted with a display. 

Romance awareness month is a great time to promote your romances and love stories that need some attention. You can promote romance outside of Valentine’s Day. People may add certain kinds of fiction to their TBR based upon the time of year but fans of a genre read it all year. 

You can use the above ideas for a month long display leading up to the start of school and fall. Add smaller displays, up for a week or less, to other parts of your library. Adding some shorter lived displays will allow for more staff to be involved and will create more interest for those who come into your building on a regular basis. 

Harriet Quimby day is August 2. This day celebrates the day in 1911 when Quimby became the  first woman in the United States to obtain a pilot’s license. In 1912, she became the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel. Beyond fiction and non-fiction books about pilots and flying, include DVDs with the theme. I would expand the display to include titles about women’s firsts in a variety of areas. I would suggest this one for a week because it might become too time consuming to fill in for an entire month. More general ideas work better for that.

International Day of the World’s Indigenous People was established by the United Nations in 1994. Search through your collection for titles related to any of the indigenous peoples in the world. This is August 9th which will take you through the second week of the month.

The next week includes National Thrift Shop Day on August 17. This is a great day to use in conjunction with programming related to upcycling clothing from thrift shops. While teens will enjoy that program, don’t forget adults. Set up displays with books about thrifting, clothing design and alterations. If your library has a blog or uses social media, invite patrons to submit photos of their own thrifted outfits. You could even have a fashion show for attendees to strut their stuff in your library. Partner with a local craft or sewing shop to demonstrate the how to’s of clothing alteration and customization.

For the end of the month, there is an option with an easy passive program. One is to celebrate Find Your Inner Nerd Day on August 23rd. Set up a display about various hobbies and interests as well as fiction about people who have a particular obsession. Encourage your patrons to share what they nerd out about either by having a box or bulletin board or on your social media. This is an easy passive program and may help those who love bird watching, trains, or crochet to find their people

There are some more serious options for the end of the month such as International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition also on August 23rd or Individual Rights Day on August 29th. You could combine these with side-by-side displays to encourage patrons to think about both the crimes and terror of the past while also considering the state of individual rights today. Know your community and library leadership when picking display topics. I think a best practice is to balance weighty and serious displays with more fun and frivolous ones. This may help your message get across.

Please reach out if you have ideas for August displays or if you would like to talk to me about setting up a display schedule for your library!

Unshelving For Small Libraries

 One question I have been asked in the past is what to do if you are a smaller library without fancy devoted to displays, what can you do to merchandise your collection. There are opportunities within any library to showcase books that need some more attention. If you have interest in a webinar devoted to this, please let me know! I will soon post some pictures here and on my instagram account that smaller libraries can use. 

One thing to use are simple wire easels. They are available from library specific vendors as well as mass merchandisers. Here is an example from Demco.  You can place these at the end of each shelf and showcase one title. This is something we do at my library & it has the benefit of being fillable by any member of your staff. It’s easier on the book than standing it up without an easel, especially for thinner books with paperbacks. You can do this in every part of your collection, including youth. 

Any place in your library with a flat service can be a display. I have used simple bookends & have placed a themed collection of 3-5 books near printers, catalog computers, and on top of fixtures. Place a sign if there is room. Even a small sign that says “Check these out!” Rotate them through each part of your collection. Don’t forget to use space on your service desks. 

Add a place near your service desks with small sign that says “Ask me about this book.” Staff who are willing to participate can add a book during their shift. It’s a great way to learn to book talk as it’s a book they have picked and are familiar with. Not every patron will ask but it’s way to promote books throughout your collection. After they become more comfortable, staff may need to bring more than one book with them!

Finally, don’t forget book carts. They can be moved anywhere in your building. I share the recommendation than many readers advisor experts have to bring a book cart into your program. (Don’t forget books for parents in your story times.) You can create a cart with any theme that interests you and place it around your building. You will eventually find the places that get the most attention from your patrons. If there is an event or another reason that the space needs to be used, the cart can be moved. 

If you have ideas for small libraries or techniques that you have used, please let me know! 

Unshelve with Some help from Barnes & Noble: Great American Novel Picks from Our Favorite Authors

It's not necessary to create great displays out of thin air yourself. Use ideas that vendors and publishers send you in their marketing emails and browse their sites for ideas. Barnes & Noble has a list of Great American Novel Picks From Our Favorite Authors up on their site. You can browse the list of suggestions and find the titles in your collection, add a note with which author recommended them, and watch them get checked out. Library patrons love celebrity reading suggestions which is why I have used Barack Obama and Bill Gates' reading lists to great success. Clearly, B&N knows this as well which is why they have asked a variety of popular authors for their picks. The list is heavy on classic novels like The Great Gatsby. 

A more fluid display and one which would be easier to fill would be a display with a sign that reads Great American Novel Picks and have your staff fill it with their choices. The limitation would be that they need to be novels and by an American author. If you ask them to dig into your collection and avoid the obvious choices, you will have created a display that can be up for a month. The idea of a Great American novel is nothing that you need to clearly define. Pick diverse authors and avoid bestsellers and obvious classic novels. 

Bring in genre fiction and titles from smaller publishers. Your entire staff, regardless of title can participate. Allow them to have fun and try to not police what gets added aside from watching for diversity and as few obvious choices as possible. 

If you want to create something more innovative and a passive program, create a social media post and ask your readers what their choices for a Great American Novel. You can add some of those titles to the display. If you can't use social media for this, put a box up and ask patrons to write their choices down. There will be some degree of excitement as patrons come in to see which books made the display as they discover their next great read. At the end of the month, you can publish the list of entries on your website, blog, social media, or on a sign in your library. 

Unshelve Your Collection Using the Best of 2026, So Far

 It's midyear and there are many outlets who have published best of the year (so far) lists. This is a great idea to use for a book display for your library. There are a couple of different ways you can use midyear best of lists to promote your collection. 

One way is to review the lists and find the titles you own but which could use a spotlight to increase circulation. There is always a good chance that a critical favorite hasn't received the attention from your patrons that it deserves. You can put up QR codes with links to the lists so your patrons can see every title but focus your display on the titles you own but which haven't circulated as well as you would like. 

The second way is to involve your entire staff and have them nominate titles for the Best of (So Far) list. Add a sign that indicates that they are your staff's choice for the best of the year. The display can be filled in with any 2026 published title that needs attention. By not adding names and making it very general, the display can be filled in by anyone on staff. Don't forget to include fiction, non-fiction, and youth materials.

Here are some of the lists that have been created:

Attack of the Best Lists 2026: Half Year Check-In (updated w/ NPR Books on 6/30/26) - RA for All

Attack of the Best Lists Posts - RA for All 

NPR staffers share their favorite fiction reads of 2026 so far - NPR Books

Here are the nonfiction books NPR staffers have loved so far this year

The Must-Read Books of 2026 (So Far) - Penguin Random House

Reading roundup: Suggest me some of your fave books of 2026 so far! - r/suggestmeabook

The Best Books of the Year (So Far) - New York Times

The Best Books of 2026 (So Far) - Barnes & Noble

Most popular books published in 2026 - Goodreads

The Best Books of 2026 So Far - The New Yorker

Top 20 Books of 2026 So Far - Amazon.com

The Best Books of 2026 -  Vogue

The 17 best popular science books of 2026 so far - New Scientist

The best books of 2026 so far - The Economist

The best books of 2026 so far — picked by FT readers - Financial Times

Looking for Clues - Readers Advisory for Mystery Lovers

 I will be presenting Looking for Clues - Readers Advisory for Mystery Lovers for PCI webinars on Wednesday, July 8 at 2 pm ET. If your library consortia, state library, or other organization subscribes, I hope that you will join me!

I have embedded my slideshow below as well as my list of resources. 

Looking for Clues: Readers Advisory for Mystery Lovers - Resources
PCI Webinars

General Readers Advisory

RA For All (Becky Spratford) – Readers' advisory blog for librarians featuring book recommendations, genre resources, programming ideas, and professional 

Library Reads – Books chosen by US library workers 

NPR Books We Love – NPR’s guide to books
Passively Recommending Books – My blog which focuses on passive readers advisory 

Mystery Awards

Anthony Awards 

Edgar Awards 

Agatha Awards 

Barry Awards 

Awards of Excellence (Crime Writers of Canada) 

Dagger Awards 

Lefty Awards 

Macavity Awards 

Ned Kelly Awards 

The Eye Awards
Thriller Awards 

Mystery Focused Websites

CrimeReads 

Sisters in Crime 

Crime Writers of Color 

Stop, You're Killing Me! 

Mystery Writers of America 

Cozy-Mystery.com

International Thriller Writers

Malice Domestic
Mystery Readers International

Australian Crime Writers Association

Private Eye Writers of America

International Thriller Writers

Crime Writers’ Association

Left Coast Crime

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine 

Crime Writers of Canada

List of Mystery Focused Organzations

Sisters in Crime

ALA Annual 2026 - Thoughts and Take Aways

 First thing is that you should all read Becky (RA for All) Spratford's post here. I agree with her, especially the details that made her angry. I participated in the Library Insights Preconference and watched many of the panels. One thing I noticed is that if you are not involved in libraries post-Baker & Taylor, you can't really understand how much the world of library book purchasing has changed. It would have been helpful to have someone who is working in that area now speak about that, rather than a consultant. There were acquisitions librarians in both public and school libraries in the room. 

A panel on what libraries wish publishers would publish emphasized gaps in different age groups. There is an unmet need for young teen lit, with appeal to those roughly 12-15. These books would have shorter chapters and exciting covers. Genres like mysteries and horror (spooky, not scary) are especially popular. There is also a gap in humor, especially that which has appeal to girls. On the other end of the spectrum, there are also not as many books which focus on older protagonists aside from mysteries. These readers want to see themselves and their experiences on the page. 

I echo Becky's disappointment with ALA's decision to allow Sharjah Book Authority CEO Ahmed bin Rakkad Al Ameri a spotlight at the opening ceremony. There were other international library leaders in attendance who could have added to the call to end censorship and the restricting of the freedom to read, rather than giving the microphone to someone from a country which actively restricts the press and oppresses the LGBTQ+ community. It's ridiculous to celebrate that community with one hand while giving positive attention to someone who represents a nation where that community is criminalized. 

There were no panels on readers advisory that I saw. Becky and I hosted an ALA huddle which was clearly designed for 5-6 people to have a conversation. Over 20 people showed up and some unfortunately left as they could not hear us in the open hallway with a high ceiling. It was a great conversation and I hope that there are some panels on book display basics for attendees. If you are visiting here from that huddle, welcome! Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss book display or passive readers advisory for your library. 

It was wonderful to see horror authors like James Tynion IV, Tananarive Due, Cynthia Pelayo, and Daniel Kraus at the conference. There did seem to be an emphasis on YA and youth literature at the conference. I did have some meaningful meetings with vendors and learned about upcoming titles but overall, there did seem to be less offerings for those who deal in adult fiction.

Hopefully, I will see many of you in New Orleans next year!

ALA Annual Starts Today

I will be attending ALA Annual in Chicago this year. There will be recap posts with what I saw and learned but I don't have a firm schedule for that.
My appearances will be at Friday's Library Insight Summit and at a Huddle in the ALA Connect Zone on Sunday at 11 am. 

I have been looking at events in the ALA Annual app and marking which ones I have even some interest in. There is no way to see everything so I try to make the schedule more manageable by  marking anything that I might find interesting. While I sometimes end up with more than one panel or presentation selected, choosing between two or three panels is easier for me than a long list. 

Include time to look at the exhibit hall which is huge and will definitely take more than one visit to see what you are interested in. 

If you happen to run into me there, come up and say hello!