Displays in New Locations

In the review I wrote about one of the books I read recently, What They Don't Teach You in Library School, I mentioned that it discussed thinking about one's library like a retail store.  Based on this idea, I started contemplating new locations for some of our displays.

A few weeks ago, I moved our popular reading display to a more obvious location that is adjacent to the path many students take on their way into the library.  The number of students I've seen looking at the display has skyrocketed!  The former location is visible in this photo:

You can't see the doors, but students enter the building off the right side of this photo and continue on into the rest of the library without ever really entering this area. The popular reading display is the small one tucked back in the corner (kind of in the center of the photo itself) behind all the furniture. The chairs move around a lot, so inevitably they end up quite close to the display. People are then even less likely to notice it or approach it.

I don't have a good way to get a picture of the location of the display now (the main floor has a pretty big open area for my little camera), but it's much more centrally located and looks like this:

It would be nice to be able to expand it to include more books, but the books rotate pretty frequently so it doesn't seem to be a huge issue.

We've also recently added "Staff Picks," one of which includes a student worker's review of that book.  I'm hoping more students will review the books as well.  We'll see what effect the "Staff Picks" have.

Popular Reading in Academic Libraries

Ah, finally some time for professional development after a crazy semester...

I'm reading a great article entitled "Giving Pleasure Its Due: Collection Promotion and Readers' Advisory in Academic Libraries" (The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 34.6: 520-526). The authors of this article make a number of suggestions for incorporating popular reading into the academic library:

1. Create genre lists (in print and/or online) of popular reading materials held by the library.
2. Leave the book jackets on to grab readers' attention.
3. Displays: pick a popular reading book and highlight related nonfiction and archival materials, books from the year end "Best of..." lists, Banned Books Week, books and their movies, staff recommendations, etc.
4. Bring eye-catching books (and CDs or DVDs) to display during instruction sessions.
5. Recommend and encourage use of the local public library for popular reading and for various assignments where a public library would have more resources (self-help books, an entire class reading the same novel, etc). Along with that, of course, is having an awareness of the local public library's policies for college students.
6. Become more familiar with readers' advisory resources.

I would also add that reading Publishers Weekly is a great way to keep up on the popular books. We circulate it around the staff here. While I occasionally find books to add to my library's collection, I more often find books I want to read or that I want to recommend to friends.

I have done a few things both at my current library and my previous one to promote popular reading. Over the Summer, I put together a more or less permanent popular reading display (as opposed to all the other displays I attempt to change monthly). The books cycle as they are checked out. At my previous job, I set up a popular reading collection by leasing books through McNaughton. I also really enjoy creating displays for Banned Books Week, although sadly I did not have time to do that this year. After reading this article, I am also considering the creation of a online list of popular reading books available here at my library, which will be helpful to students and also to me when I'm trying to restock the display. :)