Cross Posting w/RA for All - Unshelve Your Collection!

I wrote this up for the blog RA for All which is home to Becky Spratford, the best readers advisory trainer out there and the head Halloween Librarian. She knows the best ways to effective turn your entire staff into people who can recommend books and help patrons find their next great read. Becky is also a tireless advocate for library workers while also serving as the secretary for the Horror Writers Association. Find more information about how you can bring her into your library for staff training here. 

Shelves and shelves of book spines can create a great picture but it's not always the best way for a patron who is browsing your stacks to find their next great read. That's why this year I am encouraging everyone to unshelve their collections. All this means to find as many ways as possible to get your collection away from being lost in your stacks and out where it can be discovered by someone. 

There are simple ways to accomplish this. The easiest is to purchase some easels and put one book face out on every shelf. You will be amazed at what will be checked out simply because you put it face out on a shelf. This also is easy for any library worker to help keep filled; all that has to be done is a book picked from the shelf and placed on an empty easel. There is a sort of serendipity to this as everyone in your building will likely pick a different book so what’s faced out will constantly change. 

Book displays are another way to unshelve your collection by curating a small collection of materials on a theme and grouping them together. I cover basics and try to provide ideas on my blog and in my presentations for library workers. The magic behind book displays is that they the covers are faced out and can catch someone’s eye. Mix up fiction and non-fiction. Move materials to a part of your building that is far from where the rest of the collection is located. Add audiovisual materials to a display with books. Keep the signage and decorations simple. The focus should be on the covers.

Your eBooks and eAudiobooks are a treasure that not everyone in your community know about. You can unshelve them by setting up a book display with covers from the titles included in your digital collection. Add QR codes to the website and information about how to sign up for the service. You can mix the face outs on your shelves by adding signage on some shelves with suggestions for titles in your eBook collection. 

Whatever social media accounts that your library uses can also help unshelve your collection. One idea I have suggested is a “Five for Friday” series. Just pick five titles on a theme and take a picture. You can put them on a cart, table, or have a staff member hold them. A schedule can be set up and anyone who works in your library can have a chance to pick a theme and their five items. Add a short paragraph explaining the titles and provide information about how to put them on request. If staff are comfortable, you can have a short video where the staff member explains their choices. 

If a topic pops up in the news, use that as a reason to add a post with some titles that might be of interest to someone who wants more information. Find a theme similar to what you would use for a book display and create a grouping of covers for your social media. If someone has the interest and skills, you can create clever graphic or just use a series of book cover images. 

Don’t limit your unshelving efforts to your building. Partner with local businesses and get small posters and fliers out into your community that include titles and covers from your collection. You can use local celebrations and events for inspiration. Create bookmarks with covers that can be given away. Make some themed posters and book marks with coffee related titles for a cafe or pizza related titles for a pizza shop. There are pet speciality stores that are popping up. There are many pet related titles in our collections. Remind the people in your community who don’t regularly come into your building how amazing your library is. 

For the rest of 2025 I am going to try to discuss ways of unshelving your collection that can be used by libraries regardless of size or budget. Reach out to me if you have ideas that your library has used to show off the titles in your collection. I would love to share them! Let’s use this year to help readers discover what treasures are waiting for them on our shelves. 

Grabbing Ideas from Anywhere to Unshelve Your Collection - Reading as an Escape

 I realize not everyone sees a potential book display idea everywhere. But you should be keeping notes if something does give you an idea for a potential display or list. Recently, I saw a post by Atlantic columnist Yair Rosenberg about a book called Breaking Bread With the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs. While I've not read the book, it did give me an idea for a display about reading and books as an escape to a more tranquil and calm place. Even the title of a book can help create a display that might have nothing to do with the content of that book. 

During turbulent times some people seek out cozy, calm, and sweet reads as an escape from the news and whatever else is upsetting in their life. Cozy reads have become part of each genre and have increased in popularity. You can bring out titles from your backlist and help people find gentle, sweet, and comforting fiction. 

Each member of your staff may have a comfort read - these are often books that are re-read during times of stress. An interactive display or passive program can be created by asking your patrons to provide their own comfort reads. Expand it to your social media by asking people to comment with suggestions for comfort reads. Suggestions from readers will help fill the display and online book lists. A program with local speakers talking about meditation or other ways to relax can have a cart of books put in the room which are related to the theme. 

Think about what brings you comfort and relaxes you. Find music and movies that work. There are cookbooks with comfort foods, baking cookbooks, and books about warm drinks. Perhaps titles about meditation, getting a better sleep, or the benefit to slowing down can be included. If you include youth materials, there are books about sleep and napping that you can find as well. 

There are a variety of ways to explore the theme of "a tranquil mind" that you can explore. This also means that as materials are checked out, you can fill the display from all over your collection. Fiction, non-fiction, youth materials, and A/V can all be used. 

One book title mentioned in a post can lead to a variety of ways to promote your collection so keep your mind open and write down ideas as your find them!

Welcome to 2025 - The Year We Unshelve Our Collections

 I am back at home after spending some time with friends for New Year's Eve. While we all re-evaluate what will be different in 2025, I want to encourage you to unshelve your collection more this year. I've chosen that well-used library phrase to describe taking books out of the stacks and moving them around your building to show off what treasures are in your stacks. 

Even if you have a small building and no fancy fixtures to use for a book display, you have a surface somewhere in the building that has space for a few book easels. Even without a sign, you can display books near your catalog computers, service desks, near the printers, on a cart anywhere in your building... Walk your building as if you are a patron and you will find places. 

Take pictures of titles on a theme and put them on your social media or blog. You can even create flyers with book lists and QR codes that link to your eBooks, library card registration information, and website. Partner with local businesses to put fliers in their buildings. Offer to create lists that complement special events or local celebrations. Spreading the word about the great titles in your collection needs to happen beyond the walls of your library. There are still people out there who don't know we offer digital books and audiobooks.  Every new user is a new library supporter who can potentially advocate for the library when it's necessary. 

Don't forget to archive the titles you displayed and put on lists either online or somewhere in your building so that they can be recalled for a curious patron. This idea from Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, NH is one of my favorites. That way anyone on staff can assist a patron who asks about a book that was on display a month ago.

If you would like staff training in passive readers advisory, including genre specific displays, book displays, displays that include passive programming, or passive readers advisory in general - please contact me at Lila [dot] Denning [at] gmail [dot] com. 

Book Display Idea - Using School Library Journal

I'm sure we all receive promotional emails not only from publishers and library vendors but from outlets like Library Journal and School Library Journal. Don't be so quick to delete them and move on. The staff at School Library has some really wonderful ideas that you can borrow for a book display or book list online. 

A recent mailing from them included an article called Reverse Engineering: Taylor Swift Inspired RA Tools in Canva. This February 2024 post from Karen Jensen (Teen Librarian Toolbox) includes several images she made in Canva. The idea of making readalike lists or displays for each of Taylor Swift's eras is one you could use throughout a month. 

Next up was 8 YA Thrillers That Blend Influencer Culture with Page-Turning Plots. While this article is about YA fiction, you could reproduce it with adult fiction as well. If you have non-fiction about influencer culture in your collection, you can add them. I would include some non-fiction about social media in general. 

This October interview by Amanda MacGregor called A ‘Fear Factor’ Rating Adds Spice to the YA Horror Halloween Season, a guest post by Tony Jones has titles you could reference to do a "Chilling Fears" display with YA fiction for post-holiday winter months. Horror has no season and is read all year. With its increased popularity, adding a YA display to draw attention to the horror in your collection for teens is a great idea. Another area to get ideas is this September article called Short Stories, Big Scares: 7 Middle Grade & YA Horror Collections.

If you check their website under News and Features, you will see a variety of articles. The headlines alone can spark an idea and send you out to unshelve your collection to draw attention to the great books that need some help to find their reader! While their audience is librarians who focus on youth, the ideas can easily be transferred to adults. 

I will leave you with another great idea that can be used with your juvenile, young adult, and adult collections - Out of This World: Eight Sci-Fi Graphic Novels | Stellar Panels. As popular as graphic novels are at the moment, I'm sure that you can find titles in all three collections which could use some time under the spotlight. 

Subscription information for School Library Journal is here. 

Examples of Great Marketing of a Collection - LaGrange (IL) Public Library

 While I was in the Chicago area for the Adult Reading Round Table conference, I stopped by the LaGrange Public Library with Becky Spratford who serves as a trustee there. I took some pictures to share some of the great marketing decisions they have made to unshelve their collection and bring it out in front of their patrons' eyes. 

When you enter the area with the adult non-fiction and fiction stacks, you are greeted by a display of books with the theme of Illuminating Winter Tales. There is one sign with only the title and suggestions of other books on the sign. 

The display itself is simple and clean with the emphasis on the books. It's also blends genres on the display. You could add a QR code with a link to an eBook collection with the same theme or a blog post about the theme. Overall, it's a great display that brings book covers to readers as soon as they enter the space. 

They make use of endcaps to provide more reading ideas. This one is tied into a reading challenge "Feeling Blue." They have used the only sign to provide more reading suggestions. This sort of display is easy for anyone to fill in. 

There is a "Warm Up With a Hot Romance" endcap. I love the visual effect of the multicolored covers. 

I love the idea of having a display with titles recently returned, especially if they are backlist titles that might be new to a lot of readers. 

There is not a season for those interested in genre fiction. I love the horror display up in December. While you should fill displays. Having one with empty spots will help reinforce to other patrons that the books are on display to be checked out. 

   

The first step in unshelving your collection and letting the covers help sell your backlist titles to patrons is putting easels up on the shelves like they have done here. It draws the eye to the shelf and is a simple way to put up faceouts. You will be surprised what will get checked out simply because it is faced out. 

Using Library Aware from EBSCO does make some of this signage easy but you can replicate these great ideas. Don't feel intimidated if your library can't afford that product. Use the idea and go from there. Offering readalikes for books with long wait lists is another way to draw attention to your backlist. 

Finally, this is a great use of a bulletin board in a public library, Encourage people to place holds so you know what will be popular!

I loved seeing how LaGrange promoted their collection. Hopefully, you saw some ideas that you can borrow for your own collection. I will try to post more pictures from libraries I visit. 

Let Publishers Help You Unshelve Your Books - Bookcation Edition

 

I opened this email today from Simon & Schuster. It's a cute idea that you can definitely use to help promote your backlist titles. You can save it or repeat it in the summer just by switching the text around. You can use any fiction or non-fiction in your collection. I think that using travel books would be fun. 

This is a great display theme because it can be adapted to any part of a collection that could use a boost in attention. That also makes it easy to fill while it's up. This is a huge benefit to anyone who has smaller book displays or leaves them up for several weeks. It also means that anyone can help add books when needed. 

Make notes when a publisher email sparks an idea and use it to promote your collection. 

Using the Edgar Awards to Unshelve Your Collection

 The nominee list for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award has been announced. The awards will be presented on May 1, 2025, at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square. Some of the nominees are by popular authors or are best sellers that you likely have many requests for (The God of the Woods by Liz Moore is an example). But dig down and you will find books that haven't circulated as much or have been overlooked by your patrons. 

Those books that haven't gotten the attention at your library should be the focus of your display. Post the entire list and include verbiage that explains your holds list. Use the buzz that the Edgar awards can give to help give a boost to titles that need it. The God of the Woods doesn't need our promotional assistance. 

Another option is to mine the lists of past nominees to find backlist titles that would benefit from the spotlight. While you might not have enough of the current nominees to keep a display filled for a few week, the database goes back to the 1940's so you will find titles in your collection that your readers have not discovered. 

The MWA does have a full color listing of the nominees in their newsletter, The 3rd Degree. One page just has the covers of the novel nominees if you want something smaller. 

Other awards given include the Grand Master award. This year Laura Lippman and John Sandford will be honored. Neither of these authors really needs our marketing assistance but you could dig into your stacks and find read-alikes for both of them while having signage that announces the awards. You can add a copy or so of Lippman and Sandford's books if you want to draw some more attention to the display. 

I hope this helps spur some book display ideas!

Unshelve Your Collection - February Book Display Ideas

 

I know - the year has just begun but planning displays in advance will lead to better displays and less overall stress or trying to throw something together at the last minute. There are a number of month long events in February which can be celebrated. For these events, you can leave up displays for the entire month, switching out the focus if necessary.  For example, one of the most popular displays I have put up in February for Black  History Month is one dedicated to cookbooks by Black authors and biographies/memoirs of  Black chefs. Try to move beyond just history books to encompass other aspects of Black  history. One of my favorite lists on the internet is this one - 20 Black Picture Books That Aren't About Busses, Boycotts, or Basketball. It was created by Black librarian Scott Woods. I will also note that when Black staff members from my library have created Black History Month   displays, they always draw upon their own interests and help create a variety of displays that  draw upon parts of Black History and culture that don't always include the same topics that are usually used.  The other month-long events listed below definitely lead to displays with fiction, non-fiction, adult, or youth materials. Many of them could be tied to a presentation by a partner, active  program, or passive program. As far as how long to put them up, I usually suggest no more than one month. If you have  more ideas than you have space, rotate them out weekly or bi-weekly. Try to have fun with  them!

Month-Long Events Black History Month American Heart Month Great American Pie Month National Bird Feeding Month National Cancer Prevention Month National Cat Health Month National Embroidery Month National Wetlands Day  Weekly Observances 2-8: Children's Authors and Illustrators Week 7-14: National Marriage Week 9-15: Random Acts of Kindness Week; Jell-O Week;  Feb 27- Mar 2: National Pastry Week Days of Celebration 2: World Wetlands Day; Groundhog Day 4: World Cancer Day; National Mail Carrier Day 8: Safer Internet Day 11: National Day of Women and Girls in Science 12: Lincoln’s Birthday 14: Valentine’s Day 15: World Hippopotamus Day; International Childhood Cancer Day 17: President’s Day/Washington’s Birthday; Random Acts of Kindness Day