It's that time in the summer when many of our popular series are checked out and we're constantly making trips back and forth from the shelving carts. As soon as a Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Captain Underpants, or Elephant and Piggie book comes back in, someone wants to check it out again. (Which is awesome!!!)
We put up some VERY EASY displays during summer so that we can highlight books without having to spend a ton of staff time searching for thematic books. Under our large bulletin board, we keep a display of books that we grab from the recently returned carts at Circulation.
Not only is this super easy for us to fill, but it's a popular display because lots of people want to read what others around them are reading. Often this display is filled with new and popular series.
The other easy display we do is our "Librarian Favorites" display. No involved searching necessary, just take a stroll through the stacks and pull out your favorites and put them out for everyone to see. We have a older child favorites display with chapter books, middle grade, and nonfiction, and we have a younger child favorites display with picture books and easy readers. It's fun for staff to get to highlight their personal favorites and it even helps us do a little self-directed reader's advisory when staff are busy helping lots of people.
Of course, we like to display the new stuff we're reading this summer, too. Our staff "reading log" is growing weekly and I've seen lots of kids and parents pausing to check it out and asking for the books shown.
Our Engineering Table continues to be a fun activity for the kids. This past week, we put out our letter builder set from Lakeshore Learning and kids had fun making letters and all kinds of different things with it.
Our entire library staff has been working very hard on getting people signed up for the Summer Reading Club and we're at about 90% of our sign-up goal! As we pass the halfway mark, a lot of people think maybe it's too late, maybe they missed their chance, and we're encouraging them to continue to sign up and participate. There's still plenty of time to read and earn prizes. It's more important than ever to ask every person if they've signed up for the SRC so we can nab that last 10% and meet our goal.
How's your Summer Reading Club going? Everyone holding up okay?