Passively Recommending Books

This is an easy way to harness pop culture to move your backlist. There are no right answers as to what books fans of a certain show might like because what draws people to a television show or movie is different. Use your collection and involve staff, any staff, who are fans of that show or movie. If the first one you choose makes it difficult to find enough items, add a second one and create your own version of the Barbie/Oppenheimer mashup “Barbenheimer.”  An alternative way to harness excitement about a show or movie is to come up with a display highlighting titles that characters from the show would like. Again, there are no right answers. You can allow patrons to suggest titles if you wish for it to be a passive program as well.  You can also use the setting or time period from a particular show as the basis for a book display. Expand it to include other books and movies that take place in the same location as well as travel and non-fiction about that place. An easy example would

 Setting aside any libraryland debates about genre spine labels, genre filing on the shelf versus interfiling and so forth, I thought I would talk about how to use books which cross several genres or are genre blended as a theme for an online list or book display. Many books have crossover appeal. You can use this to gently suggest to your readers that there are books outside their usual lanes that they will enjoy and perhaps create another entire world of books for that patron to explore.  The easiest option is to do a "If you liked this... Try this" book display/list. You can go outside of the usual similar titles in the same genre and instead match up a memoir or biography with a fiction title. Pick someone who lived in the same era or a biography with a fictional depiction of that person. A recent idea from the news and popular culture would be a novel about the British royal family with a biography of a British royal. Pair a book like Children of Chicago  by Cynthia Pela

  February is Women in Horror Month . This is a great time to bring your library's horror out for a non-Halloween display. Again, I guarantee you that it will circulate all year.  Be broad and include non-fiction works like true crime if you need to. You can also grab some psychological suspense as there is a lot of crossover fans.  On the sign, I included the URL for the official Women in Horror Month website as well as RA for All - Horror, a great resource for any library worker looking to get more information about horror.  The Horror Writers of America have a great blog with i nformation about diverse authors . Authors' groups are very supportive of libraries and are a wonderful resource.  Mother Horror - Sadie Hartman is a horror reviewer and part owner of Night Worms Horror Book Box subscription service. Check out her Twitter and Instagram for more ideas.  Putting out genres like horror in February when your patrons might be expecting something else will draw their att

  I have never liked "New Year, New You" book displays. Self improvement does not need to have an implicit or explicit aura of self-hatred. Save the diet books and exercise videos for another day.  Instead, focus on showing patrons how they can "____ something new." They can learn something new, eat something new, make something new! It's a way to showcase some of your non-fiction collection that needs more exposure as well as helping them find something new to focus on. I have some pictures here that showcase a few of the displays I have done in the past.  Think broadly and involve staff from all over your library. Don't forget to include materials from your audiobook and DVD collections. You can even include images and handouts from your ebook collections or databases.  This idea would also work for youth services book displays. There is a gap in-between the holidays and the start of school. You could encourage some learning and crafting from kids who othe

Someone else at my library put up this display. The idea is cute - books with shoes on the cover or in the title. These sort of themes help people stumble on back list titles they may have missed. It can be tricky to fill in if you don't have ideas when you set it up. There are clearly tons of ways you could change this to suit your library's collection. Add non-fiction if you need to and grab some history of fashion or fashion books. I would even put books from health about podiatry in it!

As I have said before, faceouts are magical. These are simply a variety of titles that need a circulation boost. I have put up this display with a sign that simply had a sleepy puppy on it. Just being in front of your patrons' eyes can help them get the sort of attention they need. 

People were thinking about the 20’s at the beginning of 2020 so I obliged them with a book display . First things to be taken from this display were books about fashion. In theory, you could put this up every year until 2030.  Pay at least some attention to what is bouncing around in popular culture; you can mine it for ideas for easy book displays that let you faceout backlist lonely books. 

This display was put together by staff. It's fairly easy to both assemble and keep filled. One benefit is that it's a super easy way to put books in faceout that may have been overlooked. Faceouts are magical; they can help get books checked out that have sat, unloved and ignored, for years. They can be composed of any kind of material in your building so don't limit yourself.  When the "color of the year" is announced, it's a good time to try to find books that match that theme, both in color cover as well as title. Another idea for this sort of display include your local sports teams' colors - professional, college, or K-12. You could also use colors tied to a particular holiday if you wanted something super easy to throw up.