Week 15 Prompt

There are so many ways to market books at a library.  The library where I work has several librarians who are extremely talented in this area and I am learning a lot from them.  We have a large number of displays, readers’ advisory brochures, author and other programs, and are starting a new online readers’ advisory personal service.  I feel like this range of services provides a good marketing strategy to promote reading and books.

I think displays are a great way to reach out to patrons who may not know what they want to read next.  We have a variety of displays which range from current topics, literature, and historical fiction and events.  I was surprised to hear that a patron told one of our librarians that she never goes to the stacks but also just picks a book from one of our displays!  I have two favorite displays that I have created.  One was Travel through Space and Time where I selected fiction from historical to futuristic that took place all over the world.  In each book on the display, l put a slip of paper in the novel that said travel to and then the time period and the place.  My other favorite was The Real History behind Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander Series.  I found all kinds of historical fiction from 18^th century witch trials, The Loch Ness Monster, Revolutionary History, French History and Scottish and English History.  As anyone familiar with the novels can attest, there is no shortage of topics.  I also included her novels and read-alikes.  The series is extremely popular at our library and a lot of people stopped to look at the display, but not that many things were actually checked out.  Some of the displays that I have done that are most successful are actually just simple displays.  For example, I made a sign that said Get Lost in a Mystery and just put out mysteries and couldn’t stock it fast enough.  I think it is important to have interesting displays that maybe people consider and find interesting combined with more popular displays that will reach more people. 

We try to have author visits and skype events.  We have gotten some big names for the Skype (Diana Gabaldon was one!) but these are not as well attended as I would expect.  One of our best attended events was when Phillip Gulley came to the library.  We also had an event last October called Booktoberfest where we combined a local author fair with 3 keynote speakers.  We had Dan Wakefield, Susan Crandall, and Mike Mullin speak.  We only had 25-30 people per keynote which was much less than we predicted.  Despite this, patrons tell us that this is what they would like to have more author events at the library and we feel it is important as well.  Unfortunately, we don’t have the budget to get expensive speakers so we are somewhat limited in the authors we can showcase.  In August, I am planning a literary trivia night.  I’m not sure who this will turn out, but I have high hopes.  If we market it in our book clubs and other places, I hope patrons will be interested and attend.

One of our librarians who is particularly skilled at readers’ advisory is starting up a program, modeled after Cuyahoga County’s program and others, to provide ra assistance through an online form.  Patrons will fill out a form online with requests and we will provide selections for them.  The details of this are still being worked out but I think it will be a great service for our patrons.

As librarians, we are in the business of marketing books and providing information.  It is my favorite part of the job.  One of the easiest ways to market books is just to talk to patrons.  On quite a few occasions I will be working in the stacks and ask a patron if they need assistance, and they just want to talk about books.  They want to know what I have read and are searching for something new to read and this turns into a readers’ advisory interview of sorts.  It is important that we engage patrons and market books in any way we can.