Week 15 Prompt - Marketing Your Collection
Right now at my library the main way that we market our fiction collection is to create displays around our library. I create most of the displays for our adult collection and I create displays for different genres, special days/holidays, new books, and really anything that I see online that I think might be a good display. For my library there are four display areas of various sizes near the front desk and then the ends of every bookshelf also hold 2-3 books for display. All of these displays are generally used for the adult fiction and non-fiction collections. There are other display aers for teen and juvenile books. This is an easy way to get books to really stand out to patrons. We are a smaller library though and I have run into the problem where I don’t have enough books on a topic to fill a display and then keep filling it as books are checked out. Luckily for us, we are part of a large consortium so I have plenty of libraries to borrow books from for the displays. The only downside is that those books getting checked out are technically not from our collection if they are ordered from another library. I’m not sure how much that matters though because we do still get those circulation numbers. I would be interested in talking to our director about how she feels about that and if she can tell at the end of every month when she runs circulation stats if the books checked out were ours or another library’s. I also am unsure if the other library also gets to count that as a circulation for their library.
Another way that I have tried to bring more attention to our collection is by having books available at my programs. I am over teen and adult programming so whenever I have a program where I can bring in books related to that topic, I try to have them available to everyone that attends. I admit that I am not great about remembering to actually reserve these books but I am trying to get better about that. Most of the programs that I’ve ordered books for have mainly been for non-fiction books but I would like to try to fit in some fiction books about those topics as well.
Lastly, for our online book collections, I honestly use word of mouth to promote those the most. Especially lately there have been patrons that are looking for specific books that are mainly found in ebook format. So any time that I search our catalog for a book and can’t find it I immediately check Libby and Hoopla. Then I can tell our patrons that they have the ebook option and can then let them know about all of our e-resources.
I think we really undervalue the holiday book display as librarians. Looking at the numbers at my library, holiday fiction book displays are absolutely worth your time. My library takes that a step further, and we post a list of five book recommendations with each holiday we highlight on our social media. The other day it was National Unicorn Day, and we highlighted books that included unicorns.
ReplyDeleteI hear the struggle about the consortium. We are not in a consortium, so I am not sure about how that works with circulation numbers.
We also do rolling book displays. For example, when we hold a program where the local high school comes in and sings holiday music in December, we will pull a bunch of holiday books and roll the display into the room while the program is going on. People love to check out books to help keep the holiday spirit. Another example, we did a program about the history of the Kennedys, and we rolled in all our books about the Kennedys. Some of these books were fiction books about Jackie Kennedy, and they were well picked over.
I think our Holiday displays result in the most checkouts! This is especially true for the kids holiday book displays. I love seeing all of the kid's holiday display. There are so many cute children's books!
DeleteAlso, fun fact: my library will be having a unicorn program in May where a kids can come pet a unicorn! There is a farm here that dresses up their horses and does programs. We're all super excited for it.
I think that word of mouth is a great way to get the word out. I can speak from personal experience that it oftentimes just takes telling patrons about those resources to get them to use them. The amount of times I see a shocked expression on a patron's face after telling them that we have Hoopla, Libby, Kanopy, and Freegal is too many to count.
ReplyDeleteSame here with the surprised patrons!! This is especially true for the resources like Creativebug. There is an awkward display behind our front desk that I don't really like to put books on because patrons can't reach them on their own. Last month instead of books I put a Creativebug display up there with flyers just talking about what classes were available and then our media person posted about it on Facebook. You would not believe the number of phone calls we got about how to use Creativebug that month! We've had that for years but I'm guessing it wasn't very well advertised.
DeleteHi Allison, I agree that word of mouth is a great way to talk about the digital collection. My patrons seem to do either all digital books or have never touched a tablet in their life, so my casual mention of Overdrive and Hoopla to spark curiosity to check it out is usually enough talk about that!
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