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When I think of extreme library makeovers, I think of doing away with service desks, creating a YA space as large as the Children’s room and offering X-Box consoles in the computer area. This program would have been better titled “Marketing and Merchandising: Stealing from the Bookstore Model.” Of the seven panelists, two were librarians, one was a bookseller, two represented jobbers and two represented publishers.

Cheryl Scheer from the Denver Public Library talked about why purchasing and displaying multiple copies is a great idea, and to be honest, it is an outside of the box concept - buy 25 copies of those in-demand titles. When she asked kids why they preferred bookstores, “no boogers on the books” was the first answer - bookstores have new, untorn, clean copies. And, when a child goes into a library with a specific title in mind, more often than not, the book isn’t there, whereas in a bookstore, it’s always there. Cheryl promoted providing “snotless, multiple copies,” to accomplish three goals:

• Level the playing field and allow equal access to books in spite of diverse economic, social, and ethnic backgrounds (wealthy kids parents will buy them the new Harry Potter - why should poorer kids have to wait for 6 weeks, or longer?)
• Eliminate visual clutter with uniformity and allow for placing titles face out. Kids can’t read! Why do we shelve books so that all that’s visible are the skinny labeled spines?
• Address the imbalance of boy books vs. girl books - a recent glance through a major publisher’s catalog revealed books with girl appeal beat out books with boy appeal by about a 5 to 1 ratio! Make boy-friendly titles more obvious with displays.

Cheryl expressed concern about losing boy readers and not seeing enough materials for a rapidly growing Latino population - 22% of children under 5 are born to Latino families - and recommended reading Annette Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life (University of CA Press, 2003) for a glimpse at socio-economic issues, like the fact that children born to affluent parents are much more likely to speak to strange adults because they are used to interacting with adults they don’t know well (I assume from lessons, nannies, services, etc) and asked us to think about what this means in terms of customer service to our monetarily challenged clientele.

Caroline Ward from the Ferguson Public Library in Stamford, CT encouraged librarians to ask permission for and to use artwork in children’s literature to promote services and programs. As long as proper credit is given and you aren’t making money from it, permission is usually granted - all you have to do is ask.

Distributors talked about how they can provide displays, booklists, and value added services to libraries. Again, I was hoping for remodelling success stories, not being told what jobbers can do for me - for a price. They are providing displays in smaller quantities, so if you can’t quite wrap your head around 25 multiple copies yet, you can start small - 6, 9, 12 - and the displays are fairly sturdy and reusable.

Publishers seem a more likely partner to me. They offer displays, signage, and swag of all kind - all you have to do is ask and then give feedback. Author visits and videos, book discussion resources and galley editions are other publisher services.

Other tips:

• Market to parents, last time I checked babies needed someone to bring them to the library
• Get the kids involved
• Do cross promotion, i.e. “not just for kids”
• Invite publishers to do a book gossip night to promote new titles
• Put live readers in a window
• Use non-book props (everything I ever put out got stolen or broken, so I’d only do this in a locked case)
• Start a customer-recommends shelf
• Tie into movies (graphic novels are a natural for this)
• Host a blood drive and promote the vampire books
• Police tape for Banned Books Week

The Q&A at the conclusion of the program reflected that other librarians attending thought this was a remake your space program:
Q. Can you suggest a cool name for the teen area?
A. Ask the teens to come up with one

Q. How do I promote non-fiction?
A. Have a well-selected and maintained browsing collection (apply the same rules - face out, props, tie in

Q. Help! The middle school fiction is next to the picture books - what can I do?
A. Move it!

Q. How do I prevent my school library media center from becoming an online video game arcade?
A. Give kids books they are dying to read, promote with booklists

Thank goodness someone in the audience raised their hand to ask but what about the popularity of games? I jumped in and said if 80% of the population born after 1970 was playing games perhaps we should consider giving them what they want? One way around monopolizing computers for games is to designate times for games and times for research. I am starting to feel like a rabble rouser.

Tags: ALA2005, conferences

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 26th, 2005 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.