Week 15 Prompt

When I think about the library that I will work at in the future, I think it will be in a city that is not too large, possible Fort Wayne.  There are many ways I can market the library's fiction collection.  I will go over three ways that I think will be very effective.

1.  Having a great looking display for your books is very important.  Making a first impression is great for the patrons to look at the books.  This has been very effective in many libraries.  It will be good if someone takes a picture of the display and posts it on Facebook.  This is will show those that are on Facebook that we have some awesome fiction books.  The books may be books that hasn't been read lately, but people will read.  The book display can be themed.  Mother's day is coming.  We can have fiction books about mothers and there are many fictional books on mothers.  The books can cover many genres, like mystery, romance and historical fiction.  There are many movies based on books, that will another great display.  Having a librarian blog about the books on display will be another way to get people interested in the books.  When you have people talk about the display people will read them.

2.  Having a program about a book the author wrote would be great.  The author could talk about the book and other books they wrote.  It would be great if there are local authors that could come to the library.  This will get people interested in their books and other books similar to theirs.  This would also be great for writers to ask them questions and the general public can understand what goes into writing a book.  There also be refreshments served.  If you can't get an author to talk about their books, the librarians can give a program where they talk about books.  They can also have booktalks on the libraries blog.  It would be great for people to see the videos the librarians made to get people interested in the books.  This could also be posted on Facebook and people will talk about the program or the books.

3.  Having the librarians make bookmarks and book annotations about the fictional books that they like will get the books noticed.  This can also be marketed on Facebook, the libraries website and on their blog.  This will take some doing on the librarians part, but it will be very effective because the library patron will see that the librarians took the time to explain the book.  Since the librarians have many various tastes they will cover lots of genres.  There should a bookmark and an annotation of each genre in the library.  This should be at the front desk or right when you walk in.  There should be a great reveal, with sign and posts on Facebook and the website.  The object is to get people to read or listen to the books, whatever it takes.  

These ideas have worked at many libraries.  The object is to get people interested in books because it opens up new worlds and new ideas that they never thought about before.  As librarians we help many people expand their knowledge and realize that there so much out there to discover and learn.  You can compare the library to the Discovery Channel because you are always learning something new everyday.

Reference:
Saricks, J. (2005) Promoting and marketing readers' advisory collections and services.  In Readers'               Advisory Service in the Public Library.  Chicago: ALA Pp. 136-160.