Passively Recommending Books

Here are the slides from my presentation at the New England Library Association Conference in Springfield, MA. It was a great conference. If you have any questions or would like more assistance with learning best practices when it comes to book displays or passive readers advisory, please contact me.

  So, it's October and you want a book display that isn't horror? Here are some ideas that you can use.  You could always go horror - adjacent and do a true crime or horrible history display with your non-fiction. If you pick the best readable, narrative non-fiction and put it near your fiction stacks, there are books that will get checked out. This is a display that will flow into your horror book displays and lists.  Remember that you can be funny and refuse to fall into anything! Put up a display of beachy, coastal romance and fiction. Put up a sign with a flip flop and proudly demonstrate your refusal to give up summer. There are plenty of books with beaches on the front that you can use. You could tie it into a coast/ocean horror display with books like Daniel Kraus' Whalefall.  Mean Girls Day was October 3 but a book display of the books you think that the characters from the movie would like and books that fans of the movie might enjoy would also be fun.  Other holid

  I wanted to follow up on a question I received during the PLA webinar about passive readers advisory as a way to market your collection. Don't forget that books can be approached in a lot of ways. One way you can start is by looking at subject headings. You can search a lot of library catalogs by subject. They are often hyperlinked which makes it easy to search.  If we look at the example in the last post, What Kind of Mother by Clay McLeod Chapman, here are the subject headings from the MARC record: Missing children Homecoming Palmists Father and child Kidnapping Man-woman relationships Occult & Supernatural. Horror fiction Gothic fiction. Thrillers (Fiction) There are likely lots of titles on your shelves about kidnappings, homecomings, and missing children.  If we look at the publisher's summary of the book: Madi returns to her hometown and reconnects with an ex from high school, now known locally for his refusal to give up looking for his infant son who has been missi