Unshelving July - Making A Plan in Advance

 It's more than halfway to July! If you haven't put together your plan for July, I am here to help! The easiest one to put on your calendar is the Fourth of July. With the United States celebrating 250 years, I would make several displays or rotate out the type of material on your single display. Make sure you include youth materials, fiction, non-fiction, audiobooks and movies. Also, include the depth and breadth of people who make up the United States. If you can't see your entire community reflected in the items you put on the display, find more in your collection. 

July also includes Canada Day on the first. It's a good reason to bring out fiction by Canadian authors, books about Canadian history, and travel books about Canada. Make it an interactive display by asking patrons to answer trivia questions about Canada. 

The middle of the month is when Major League Baseball will host its All Star Game. This is another event that can include all parts of your collection. The game this year will be on July 14 in Philadephia. 

The 14th is also Bastille Day in France. 

There are so many food related days every month. Picking one or two every year, perhaps related to local cuisine, can include passive programming like recipe exchanges or having local cooks or restaurants come in for a tasting/cooking demonstration. 

With summer reading, some of your display space should be kept for special events and promoting the themes of summer reading. Have your youth librarians come up with a list of themes for the month. In my area, the local professional sports teams sponsor summer reading challenges so I would try to include them on a display as well. When programming ends is determined by your local school schedules, of course. 

How to make a schedule? Start with how many displays you plan to have up and set up a weekly schedule. With pre-planning, you can already have staff lined up to make the displays. The staff you have will also determine the displays. Anyone on staff should be able to participate and have a voice in deciding which displays are set up.  When the displays change out should also reflect, what makes sense for you and your library.  If the displays change out on Wednesdays, it might look like this.

July 2026

July 1-8
    July 4th Display with information about local events [staff member name and location]
    Summer Reading Theme [staff member name and location]
    Summer Reading Special Event [staff member name and location]
    World UFO Day [staff member name and location]
    Park and Recreation Month with information about local parks for staycations
        [staff member name and location]
    Princess Diana's Birthday with materials about royal families 
        [staff member name and location]

July 8-15
    Summer Reading Theme [staff member name and location]
    Summer Reading Special Event [staff member name and location]
    Baseball All-Star Game [staff member name and location]
    Disability Pride Month [staff member name and location]
    National Video Game Day [staff member name and location]
    National Mac & Cheese Day with recipe exchange and event featuring local  
        restaurants  [staff member name and location]

July 15-22
    Nelson Mandela's Birthday/Mandela Day [staff member name and location]
    Summer Reading Theme [staff member name and location]
    Summer Reading Special Event [staff member name and location]
    National Grilling Month [staff member name and location]
    Take Your Poet to Work Day. Display filled with related materials. Passive program where             patrons suggest their favorite poem or poet. Results displayed in library and online. 
        [staff member name and location]
    National Zookeeper Day Display filled with related materials. Information about local zoo.             Partnership where zoo has materials about library programming available. 
        [staff member name and location]

July 22-31
    Summer Reading Theme [staff member name and location]
    Summer Reading End of Summer Event [staff member name and location]
    All or Nothing Day with materials related to choosing extremes 
        [staff member name and location]
    Take and Make craft for Adults. Display filled with related books and patrons receive kit at             service desk [staff member name and location]
     Local Summer Festival with information about the festival. Include materials related to the             festival. [staff member name and location]
    Day of the Cowboy [staff member name and location]

Having a schedule like this available to staff means that anyone can add materials when needed to a display. That divides up the work during a busy time for public libraries. 

I have been asked where I find sources for the other holidays I use for book displays. Here are some options. The links are to July but you can bookmark the main page. While there are always many options for each month, because you are making a plan in advance, you can select the ones that work best for your library. Consider your collection and your community. 

National Day Calendar
Web Holidays
Holiday Insights

I will include information monthly to help you plan your displays. If you are interested in a program for your staff with more details about how to set up a monthly schedule or help setting up a plan for your displays, please let me know!

Read-Alikes and Bestsellers - Some things to remember

 The idea of choosing read-alikes, even for favorite books, makes some people more anxious than it should. As I mention when I teach passive readers advisory, there are many ways to approach a book. They are all legitimate as readers will approach the same book in different ways and will find themselves drawn to different parts, characters, or themes in a book. If you are providing readers advisory to an individual, you should ask the reader some questions about what they loved about the book to help find the best read-alike.

An always great display pairs a bestseller that has ever increasing holds with your library's backlist. This way you help the books in your collection find new readers while highlighting your holds service. While a request or hold list is something that library workers live with everyday, not every person who comes into your library or visits your social media or website is familiar with how they work or that they exist. Include a QR code and the URL that they need to add a popular title to their list to the display or post. 

If your library subscribes to NoveList by EBSCO, you can use their subjects to find books that will attract someone who has heard of the book or loved the book and wants something else. If you look at the entire list of read-alikes NoveList provides, there are details about why that title was suggested. There are similarities but what they all have in common is that they read-alikes for the selected title even if different facets are reflected. 

To demonstrate what I mean by there are different ways to approach a book, I will use a bestseller that has many holds in my library, Whistler by Ann Patchett. From the publisher's website: 

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

Remember that you do not need to limit yourself to books you have read. Marketing the collection is the goal, the entire collection not just what you have personally been able to read. From the publisher's description, you can see that is is about - 

Family Relationships
Fathers - Daughters
Choices
Memory
Love Over Time

I would suggest that next you browse readers comments on Goodreads. For a popular book like this, there will be many reader reviews. You will see themes repeated and those that remind you of other books.Here is a brief list: 

Authentic characters
Tragic events
Stories of reconciliation
Divorce 
Complicated childhood
Stepfamilies

You will come up with enough subjects and themes to fill a display more than once. You might even get creative inspiration. A reader named Ron mentions Patchett's books are like "opening a box of old photographs." Use that as a theme for a sign, add face outs of your read-alikes, information about holds and you have a display. There is enough information on Goodreads, so you can proceed even if you don't have NoveList. 

A final place I will suggest to get ideas is Reddit. If you search for Reddit.com and the book title with author, you will find posts in a variety of subreddits. One theme from there is that there is a lot of love for Eddie Triplett, the stepfather. Some readers identify it as a love letter to New York City. The subreddit, suggestmeabook, is a place where readers suggest books to other readers. 

Have fun with a display like this, remembering that the main point is to showcase your backlist while marketing a valuable service. 

Reach out to me if you would like me to train your library staff in how to use passive readers advisory to market your collection. In the near future, I will be discussing more ideas to harness the power of the bestselling author and book to market your collection. Come back for more ideas! 

 

ALA Annual 2026 in Chicago - Library Insights Summit 2026 - Connecting Publishers & Librarians

 On June 26, I will be participating in the Library Insights Summit, presented by Foreword with IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association), BISG (Book Industry Study Group), and NISO (National Information Standards Organization). It is a day-long conference with breakout sessions targeted at publishers, author-publishers, and librarians as well as sessions for the entire group. The registration price does include breakfast, lunch and an exhibits only badge to attend ALA Annual which follows. 

I am a participant on a panel called Smarter Marketing for Maximum Library Impact, moderated by Becky Spratford. Kaycie Hoffman Blaylock, Library & Resource Coordinator, Alexandria City Public Schools, and Rebecca Vnuk, Executive Director, LibraryReads, are also panelists. The description, from the website: 

As library supply chains and discovery systems evolve, publishers are facing new challenges in getting their titles seen and ordered. At the same time, librarians are navigating a fragmented marketplace to find trustworthy, complete information on forthcoming books. This session brings together marketing and distribution experts to show how publishers can sharpen their strategies, stretch their budgets, and strengthen relationships with this vital audience. Learn how to optimize metadata for library visibility, coordinate publicity with wholesale and discovery platforms, and build long-term awareness among collection development professionals.

I hope you will consider joining us. After Baker & Taylor's implosion, it is vital that libraries understand the publishing industry and update policies so that they can purchase directly from publishers when needed. Many of my local library systems are still dealing with shockwaves from B&T's closure, including adding in-house processing. With social media platforms, like TikTok, driving book sales, there is more of a need than ever to include small press and independently published books in our collections. 

For more insight, check out Becky's blog post about the event: Join Me and Others at the Library Insights Panel in Chicago on June 26th

I hope to run into you at ALA Annual as well as the LIS preconference!

Unshelve Your Collection Using a Writers Conference - StokerCon 2026 Wrap Up

StokerCon is the premier horror and dark literature writers conference in the United States. Part of the convention is the presentation of the Bram Stoker Awards with categories including superior achievement in a novel and superior achievement in long non-fiction. The Horror Writers Association presents the conference but you don't have to be a member to attend. 

One of the highlights of the conference is Librarians Day which anyone with a ticket to the convention can attend. For more details and resources from Librarians Day, please visit Becky Spratford's blog. She is the co-chair of Librarians Day and secretary of the Horror Writers Association. 

The panels this year, just like very year, are very helpful and planned by librarians who work in libraries. The skills and information learned could be transferred to many genres and subject areas. Attendees learned about programming and upcoming titles while also attending a brainstorm session. Every year, I have the honor of interviewing the Guests of Honor, introducing library workers to authors who are shaping the future as well as those who have created works vital to the history of horror. This year the Guests of Honor included : 

Rachel Harrison (Author of Play Nice and Cackle)

Linda D. Addison (Award Winning Poet and author)

Billy Martin (Author of Exquisite Corpse)

John Shirley (Acclaimed cyberpunk/horror author)

James Tynion IV (Eisner Award-winning horror comic writer)

Ann VanderMeer (Editor and anthologist)

The librarians who purchased a ticket for Librarians Day were also able to attend the Mass Author Signing which grants you time to purchase book and get them signed from a huge number of authors. This is a great way to discover horror works that you may not have known about. They also could browse the dealers room which included small press publishers. If your library doesn't allow you to purchase titles directly from publishers, this is a good time to start that conversation. With the shake up of library purchasing, many of us are processing items in house. Finally, they were able to attend one of the highlights of the convention, the Final Frame short film festival. The winner this year, Scissors, was amazing. 

I've attended librarians day events for romance and mystery writers, The HWA's is the best of them, with programming and speakers who are focused on libraries and library workers. 

StokerCon is a great weekend with the Halloween People and I hope to see all of you there next year!

Upcoming - Collection Development Crash Course from ALA eLearning

 In September 2026, I will be joining three colleagues to teach a four part crash course in collection development. The four parts are: 

• Developing the Youth Collection with Julie Jurgens: Thursday, September 3, 2026 at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30pm Central/12:30pm Mountain/11:30am Pacific

• Developing the Adult Fiction Collection with Lila Denning: Thursday, September 10, 2026 at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30pm Central/12:30pm Mountain/11:30am Pacific

• Developing the Adult Nonfiction Collection with Stephanie Sendaula: Thursday, September 17, 2026 at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30pm Central/12:30pm Mountain/11:30am Pacific

• Weeding Popular Materials Collections with Karen Toonen: Thursday, September 24, 2026 at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30pm Central/12:30pm Mountain/11:30am Pacific

We will cover the basics of genres, where you can find information about titles, how to find diverse titles including those by independently or self-published authors, and more. It's a course that I always enjoy teaching. The other three instructors are passionate and experts in collection development. 

Whether you are a seasoned acquisitions librarian or just want to learn more about the topic, I encourage you to register! You can find out more here. 

Five Book Display Basics To Help Start Your Unshelving Project

 This is a very brief presentation that I prepared for a smaller group of librarians.  It covers five best practices that I think every library worker should have in mind while they work on their book displays or online lists. 

I do have a more detailed version of book displays basics available for presentation. Please reach out if you are interested in starting to unshelve your collection. 

Unshelve your collection with Pride!

 It's June and time for displays for Pride to be placed in libraries and on library social media. There will be plenty of online lists and posts with titles by LGBTQ+ authors. Don't forget to check the Lambda Awards and the Stonewall Book Awards for ideas. While you are assembling books for your displays and lists, watch that you are including as much of the LGBTQ+ community as possible. You can use the various flags to identify books that focus on a particular community to help those patrons who are not ready to ask for help. Creating lists and bookmarks with suggested titles that patrons can access online or pick up is another way to support LGBTQ+ members of your community. 

History and biographies are popular in displays for any cultural heritage or awareness month but don't forget cooking, fiction, poetry, art, and films. Make your the titles you select as broad and possible and expansive. Remember, as I frequently say, your patrons are as curious as you are so don't sell them short. 

Here are some lists to get you started: 

Penguin Random House - The Ultimate LGBTQ+ Book List

Reddit - Book rec for pride month? 

Brooklyn Public Library - Pride Month Books for Adults

Hamilton East Public Library - A Reading List for Pride Month

Goodreads - Listopia > LGBTQIA+ books to read during pride month!!

UCF Libraries - LGBTQIA+ Pride Month