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!

July Book Displays Ideas

 StokerCon and a vacation threw me off my schedule but I am back! Hopefully, you have started to plan your book displays in advance and won't need all of these ideas except for fill-ins. 

July is named for Julius Caesar. Create a display with titles about Roman history and Julius Caesar. An ongoing series could be a display tied to the stories about how each month got it's name. You can pick and choose from the various reasons given for how each month got its name depending upon what works with your collection.

The first holiday that July brings to mind is US Independence Day. Beyond fiction and non-fiction about the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence, remember that to include the stories of those outside the Founding Fathers. Check your collection for titles about the experience of Black Americans, women, and Native Americans. You could also put up a display about other battles for independence or about other historical events which occurred around the same time. 

Canada Day is July 1. Time to check for Canadian authors in your collection as well as travel books and fiction set in Canada. 

Aliens are an option twice in July (although they really are always an option.)July 2 is World UFO Day and July 21 Invite an Alien to Live with You Day. Science fiction as well as the non-fiction about alien encounters. Pair it with a display of youth materials.

July 3 is  the Start of the Dog Days of Summer which can be matched up with July 26's National Dog Photography Day. Besides a book display, create a passive program and encourage patrons to submit photos of their pets. You can post them in the library and/or on your social media. 

Summer Fruits is an easy book display/book list to create because you can use books with fruit on the cover or in the title. Supplement it with fruit-oriented cookbooks. 

Ice cream/freezers/snow is a fun idea for a book display in the heat of summer. There are plenty of books with ice cream, snow, ice, cold in the title. We have done this at my library in the summer even though our winters bring no snow. The idea of both this display and summer fruits is to showcase your backlist around a fun theme. Any library worker can help keep these filled in. 

Bicycles and motorcycles are popular during the summer. Bring out non-fiction about bicycle and motorcycle travel and repair. There are also plenty of fiction titles with bikes in the title or on the cover.

Shark Week remains popular with the public. Look for all the shark books and sea/ocean/underwater horror. Don't forget to set up a youth display as well. In our library, sharks rival dinosaurs in popularity. 

The 1969 moon landing is a great time to showcase your science fiction backlist as well non-fiction about space travel and the solar system. 

Use Bastille Day on July 14 to showcase French history and fiction about the French Revolution. There are likely DVDs in your collection set in this time period. 

July 25 is Puerto Rico Constitution day, celebrated also in some US cities. Find your Puerto Rican history and travel books and pair them with books by Puerto Rican authors. Recent Bram Stoker award winners Gabino Iglesias and Cina Pelayo are a good start. 

July 31 is Harry Potter's Birthday beyond the fact that this best selling series needs no help from us to find readers, there are other well documented reasons to avoid promoting this series. Use this holiday to help your patrons find read alikes for the series. Some patrons may have completed the series and would appreciate some other series to start. Here are a few lists to get you started. 

Naperville Public Library Harry Potter Read Alikes 

Pembroke Public Library Harry Potter Read Alikes

Goodreads Harry Potter Read Alikes

Enjoy your July and summer book displays!