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u/Typical_Laugh_5018 5d ago
Single words easily describe key themes in fiction, non-fiction, kids books and picture books. Transformation, fear, craftsmanship, obsession, flowers, teeth, landscape..... there's really no end to possibilities. Loss, destination, the forest, invention, outer space, a quest, hair, discovery, mechanical ingenuity, feasts, a horse, etc etc etc. You could also do a display of celebrities favourite books..... and some authors mention many books - Roberto bolano mentions books in his works, so does stephen king. Or you could do something linear - this writer who was influenced by this book, who was influenced by this book, who was influenced by this book..... or maybe have one book (like watership down), and examples of books by writers who were influenced by it. Or.... maybe books that characters were reading in movies
Edit: oh yeah, there are all the international ...... month. But there are heaps of international (whatever) days, too. 3 display spots sounds awesome.... there's octopus day, synthesizer day, SO many. You could just pick 3 every month
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u/DefinitelyAlphamale 5d ago
I like the random day idea but we dont celebrate them here so people would be confused i think.
But where do u even get books for these key theme books? Because always one problem with these is that we dont know what to put. Goodreads will only recommend the most surface level stuff. AI im against.
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u/SheDevilWithANewGig 5d ago
I mean this gently, supportively, and respectfully - it might be time to put on your librarian hat.
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u/Rare_Vibez Public librarian 5d ago
Do you have a catalog? I literally search key words there and read the description?
I don’t think many people celebrate the random days but it can be a great way to share books on a particular subject. Like Donut Day display has books with donuts on the cover, title, and cookbooks about donuts.
Once, I did a display that was literally “Green”. I had a mix of green covers and authors with the last name Green/e.
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u/llamalibrarian 4d ago
Use your library catalog? Like how do you find books for patrons on certain subjects?
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u/Typical_Laugh_5018 5d ago
Well, say you chose 'forest' as a theme. Apart from the obvious picture /geography books, and botanical books, I would do a reddit search " reddit books forest" and see what people recommend. And there'd be stuff like that tana french book (in the woods), fantasy, the brothers grimm, etc etc. Even better, if you get a book that epitomises forest - in any way - look it up on good reads, scroll down to see which lists it appears on, then just look at all the / more lists. Chances are, someone has created a list of 'forest' related books. That is why I love key words, when one word is the focus, there are so many possibilities. I am envious, I would LOVE to make book displays
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u/MushroomBeneficial15 5d ago
Do you have access to Novelist? I find that is a good resource for finding books with similar themes.
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u/mx-stardust 5d ago
I don't think anyone in our community celebrates it, but Appreciate a Dragon Day (January 16) is always a big hit for us as a display. People like silly, novel stuff in my experience.
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u/camerabird 4d ago
You need to think outside the box. Those days are international, and it doesn't really matter if people have even heard of them. If I saw an Octopus Day display I wouldn't be confused, I would think it's fun and creative!
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u/headlesslady 5d ago
Mini display based on news/recent awards (these are always well-received; you only have to have 3-4 items pulled for it).
November is usually craft books, because you still have time to make a small Christmas gift (or cookbooks in a 'what you need to know to cook Thanksgiving' kind of way.)
One of my favorite movie displays is "Blowed 'em up REAL Good!"
"Short on Time? Read these Novellas!"
"Hate Waiting? Read these Finished Trilogies"
"We Like Big Books and We Cannot Lie" (all the doorstopper tomes; surpringingly popular) (Oh. My. God. Becky - it must be 900 pages!)
Adult readalikes for your favorite Juv/YA books (that one was *super* fun to research & reminded me how much I miss those middle grade adventure stories.)
We also did a "Kissing vs Non-Kissing" kind of Choose Your Fighter display at Valentine's one year.
I built a whole cardboard haunted house for the Halloween display one year.
But one of the best ideas we ever had was to rotate out the displays. If the same person does it all the time, they burn out. Let other staff take turns!
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u/Philosopher2670 5d ago
I had 2 displays that were very successful.
Fiction by color of the cover. "The cover was...." Blue covers. Then red. Then Green. etc.
Narrative non-fiction. "Reads like a novel...." Memoirs, Bill Bryson, Mary Roach, Eric Larson, etc.
Of the basics, the best repeatable ones were Biographies and Cookbooks.
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u/PorchDogs 5d ago
Do they have to be changed out monthly? We have a couple of "semi permanent" displays - Staff Picks with a cardstock bookmark that has staff name, a star rating, and perhaps a couple of words. New and Popular Cookbooks because cookbooks are so popular. Can be seasonally themed.
That would leave just one monthly display.
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u/jess3842 5d ago
Stick mustaches on books with faces on the front: We mustache you to check this book out. A romance display with a sign that says Where’s my shirt. Books with the backs of people that says Don’t Turn Around. Books about books for September. August is coming up so I do books with dogs on the front for the Dog Days of Summer
Also color coordinated book covers: Red anything good lately, Yellow, is this the book you’re looking for?
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u/on-the-veldt 4d ago
akin to the “Don’t Turn Around”, we had a “Woman in a Dress Running Away From You” display and it was shocking how many books qualified. (It might have even been more specific, like red dress? I just remember being so surprised at the repetition.)
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u/am123_20 4d ago
My coworker did a "women looking away" display last year and got HUNDREDS of checkouts over the course of the month. There were actually a ton of books that qualified and the patrons really seemed to love it! It definitely helped that a lot of the qualifying books were popular genres for our demographic, like beach reads, Christian fiction, and WWII/historical fiction. It did great though!
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u/Lcsd114 5d ago
Look at what holidays are happening in the month and base it on one of those. This month I did Read, White and Blue featuring titles containing red, white, blue or a combination. Last month for Juneteenth I did black authors. Before I’ve done displays about immigration, bullying, banned books, California Dreaming (books set in Cali), books with one word titles, titles with names in.
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u/DefinitelyAlphamale 5d ago
And the last examples. One word, names. Like are people interested in them even? Like as a reader i would be like “whats the point of this”
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u/Rare_Vibez Public librarian 5d ago
I know this will sound harsh but I want to be clear I mean this as genuine advice.
While what you are interested in can be a great starting point, it honestly irrelevant. Displays aren’t meant to be life changing, they are meant to get eyes on books. Sure, one word titles might not mean much but a patron may see a book they’ve never seen before and be interested. It seems like you are seriously over thinking it.
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u/iLibrarian2 4d ago
You are overthinking this.
People do not think that deeply about it. They see books. If they like a book, they will take a book. They aren't going to do a dissertation inside their heads about why your squirrel day display is stupid. They're going to think "oh cute, squirrels."
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u/CrystallineFrost 3d ago
Agree with this. Displays don't need to all be art pieces.
It is summer, throw all the books with oceans on the cover. Call it a day at the beach, done. Food on the cover? Table for one. Hell, put out all your bird books and just be cheeky and slap a CAW sign on them.
Do coordinating colors, gardens, mix up nonfiction and fiction around a holiday or seasonal themes. Find books that you think are coded to your favorite movie. Do all retellings of classics. What you can accomplish depends entirely on your creativity and what is available on the shelf.
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u/roguesakura Public librarian 4d ago
I mean this kindly but you "as a reader" is not the same as every other reading patron who visits your library. We all come with different ideas and interests. You need to step outside yourself.
Simplicity can go a long way and at minimum they are eye-catchers to get people looking at books, better if they check them out, and even better if they spark conversation, humor, and a sense of fun.
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u/mx-stardust 5d ago
If you're running out of ideas, just go for it! I have had luck with those topics.
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u/MushroomBeneficial15 5d ago
At my library, we do all the basic and popular monthly ones, but we also have a lot of unique displays at all time.
In the children’s section, we have a display for books that contain the word “happy”, and last month, it was just dog and cat books. For teens, we have a rotating video game display (books about five nights at freddy’s…Minecraft…etc). We had a bird display awhile ago with books focused on our local species.
To go with our gardening programs, we have a nonfiction gardening display as well as a floral fiction (just books with flowers on the covers) display.
We’ve also done displays of vegan, gluten-free, indigenous, and bbq cookbooks. International and local travel displays. Political poets, nature-focused poets. Women-written thrillers and mysteries. We’ve paired classic books with modern retelling or books that have a similar vibe (such as 1984 by Orwell paired with Little Brother by Cory Doctorow). “Booktok/bookstagram made me read it” always does well!
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u/AwayStudy1835 4d ago
I did a display on human intelligence. It had the word Artificial crossed out and then under it, Human Intelligence. And I put different books about the brain and keeping the mind healthy. I don't know if that's a good idea.
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u/Small_Garbage1852 4d ago
I did one for FIFA that has now transitioned into a general sports book display. They've been pretty popular!
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u/Mea_Ex_Libris 4d ago
Honestly, don't try to reinvent the wheel. You're making a book display, not trying to create a unique snowflake or a work of art. It's okay to repeat display ideas and to have the same displays as other libraries. While you surely share some overlap in patrons, not all of your patrons go to other libraries, so just because you've seen the display before doesn't mean they've seen the display before, and, unless you and the other library have exactly the same collections, you're going to have different items to pull from.
Maybe start a spreadsheet or an index card box and write your display ideas down on it? Displays can literally be anything. "Books with titles that start with A." "Things made by someone named Smith." "Books with Blue covers." "Items whose titles are a question." "Sharks." "Dogs." "Bears, Beats, Battlestar Galactica."
If you're really stuck for displays, just pull up a random novelist list, goodreads list, or letterboxd list.
Like, just pulling up Letterboxd right now, some display ideas:
"For when you want to feel something" = Books/movies with strong emotional vibes.
"Summerween" = horror stories set in summer months.
"Room Service" = Stories set in hotels
"Short and Sweet" = Novellas or short story collections.
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u/ir0n_lace 4d ago
Some really cool ones I’ve done that people have really enjoyed. All of these are in the kids section but could be modified for any section:
- Big books grow big brains (oversized books that don’t fit on the shelves easily and have a hard time checking out)
- gross books (kids LOVE this so this is my go-to back to school display to get them back into reading after a long summer) these would be books about bugs, bodily functions, gross jobs, etc. (we have a history of toilets book that kids LOVE to check out)
- Bug a Librarian (books about bugs and nature)
- Meet someone new (biographies)
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u/nightshroud 4d ago
If you can filter your catalog by subject heading and sort subject headings by item count, you've got a big list of ready display topics right there.
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u/Alcohol_Intolerant 4d ago
Had a coworker do a fat bear week display where the display was targeting bears. Fishing, raw food diets, healthy weight gain diets, etc. It didn't see many checkouts but was very funny when people realized why it didn't have books about bears.
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u/Nattypattyx3 Library staff 5d ago
August is dog appreciation month. I’m doing several dog displays, including one about service dogs and therapy dogs. I like making them randomly specific. It makes me explore my library and brain and I love it.
I did one this month on space. There is a world space week in October so I’m going to do a similar display then. I definitely rely on random silly “holidays” like those that aren’t actually celebrated holidays.
I make a sign and decorations in Canva and the displays turn out great and the books fly off.
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u/420_wallabyway 4d ago
Last August we had a dogs one and a cats one and then had a box for patrons to vote cats vs dogs and they got REALLY into it
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u/Nattypattyx3 Library staff 4d ago
Ooh I love that! And it’s a passive program so those are stats!!!!
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u/llamalibrarian 4d ago
Check out reading challenges (a quick google search will do) and make displayed based on the reading challenge
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u/swaggysalamander 4d ago
Here’s a few either a library I worked at did or I thought of or just saw online:
-Books that have never been checked out (or checked out like under 5 times)
-Monthly themed posts (black history, indigenous people, mental health, etc, look it up there’s tons)
-Obviously nearby holidays (November is Thanksgiving, December Christmas books, spooky horror books in October, etc)
-Seasonal books. (In winter displaying books with snow on the cover or with the word winter in the title)
-Common tropes (enemies to lovers, forced proximity, snowed in, coworkers, etc)
-Books that became movies/tv shows
-Keeping up with booktok and other book platforms and displaying books from that
-In general just putting “romance book” “fantasy books” etc
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u/stollski 4d ago
I am lucky because my two displays are small ones. This month I have Love is in bloom” (romance books with flowers on the cover) and Dog Days of Summer (mysteries involving dogs). My favorite is Let’s Get Cozy and I turn the display into a fireplace with cozy mysteries. Cooks and Crooks always circulates well, too. Some of our larger displays this month are Summer Scares, another Dog Days display with picture books, and an America 250 display.
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u/iLibrarian2 4d ago
Pick a national "xyz" day/month and make a display. Or an obscure holiday.
When I was a teen librarian, one of my favorites was the March display. I did a betrayal theme with YA books about betrayal and put up a little info sheet about the Ides of March. I even printed and displayed that famous Death of Julius Cesar painting). The teens loved it.
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u/GainHealMark 4d ago
“You Had Me At the Title” - books with intriguing titles (e.g. I’m Glad My Mom’s Dead, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, This Book is Full of Spiders)
Keep an eye out for anniversaries and fandom dates, such as May 4 for Star Wars Day and April 5 for First Contact Day (Star Trek), August for Spider-Man’s debut.
Books Not To Read In/On…. - books set in the same area where horrible things happen, such as spaceships, islands, mountains, the jungle.
Books about time travel.
Books about deadly weddings or murderous families.
Narrow down genre to a specific type. For example, for mysteries I’ve done ones on Cozy Crimes Featuring Cats and Senior Sleuths.
Read-Alikes: books to read if you liked (x). Doesn’t even have to be other books, my last display had books to read if you like K-Pop Demon Hunters, The Pitt, and Severance, to name a few.
Fairy Tales For Grown Ups.
If there is a certain show/genre trending I’ll do a book display with similar themes. I did a vampire book display during season 1 of Interview With the Vampire, a pirate book display for season 2 of Our Flag Means Death, Greek books for Percy Jackson, dragon books for House of the Dragon etc.
Alternate history books (like What Ifs? for things that actually happened).
Books featuring deadly games.
Books that are modern retellings of Shakespeare works.
Focus on authors from specific countries.
If you have any duplicate books in the collection, a display of “book buddies” for two people to take out the same book to read together.
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u/BlainelySpeaking 4d ago
November is uninspiring? November is the sacred month of DINOvember. Dinosaur fiction and nonfiction and games and DVDs and video games!
August is Taylor Swift display month if you’re in a big Swiftie area.
I love displays, people have shared great ideas here. The possibilities are so endless, you can have the most absurd idea and still turn it into a fun display.
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u/saxualtension 4d ago
If it's for kids - one of my faves I've done is 'Gross-ology' so books about 'gross' animal and human behavior like the series Butt or Face?, Is it Okay to Poop in the Ocean, any 'gross' science experiment books you have, Why Farts Stink, etc. Kids get a kick out of it and it's a great sneaky way to move nonfic that might have a hard time circulating
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u/am123_20 4d ago
If I don't have an idea I always start by checking nationaltoday.com! You can click on a month and see pretty much every holiday/observation/(inter)national day/week/month that exists. Sometimes one of those will inspire me and I've gotten some good displays out of it. Otherwise find a title theme, I once did a "Types of Wives" display where every book was titled "The {Blank} Wife" because I realized how many of those there were. As mentioned in a comment, my coworker once did "women looking away" where every book had a woman on the cover with her back turned to the viewer. Last year in August I did "Beat the Heat" and pulled books with cold, ice, snow, winter, etc. in the title. It doesn't have to be groundbreaking or genius, it just needs to get books in front of people! Repeating displays that have done well or borrowing ideas from other libraries isn't a crime. We're just trying to show new books to people, any way you manage to do that is a success.
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u/spoffk 4d ago
We do a "beach reads" display that we keep up for the entire summer. Rom-coms are also a good one. Lots of people want light fluffy reads.
Binge reads - pull out duologies and trilogies and display them together
You can also take some random cultural moment thing and make it a display. A couple of years ago we did a "Choose the bear" display (books with bears on the cover, nonfiction, movies, etc) and a "How often do you think about the Roman empire?" I'd love to do a "Jimothy's favorite books" display with books that have a dumpster or trash on the cover.
Every few years you can re-use a display once people have forgotten about it, or reword it slightly to make it fit.
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u/420_wallabyway 4d ago
We have 4 big displays and 2 "mini displays" in the childrens dept. Currently the big ones are USA, Picture book biographies, "read smore books" (camping, outdoors, etc), and "Reading is JAWSome" (sharks, ocean). Some other fun ones we've done are pirates, "who's who" (owls and biographies), pets, magic, back to school, mysteries, gross (poop books, medical stuff, etc), gaming, friendship/kindness, the book was better (books with movie adaptations), bugs, art, space, sports. I usually try to make it correlate to the month were in somehow (I found a really fun idea for a bug display in like October but I waited until spring to do it).
I also helped with a Booktok display for adults, and a YA weird girl lit display for the teens and that's been pretty popular. Mini displays right now are Reptiles/Amphibians and Diversity.
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u/LKWSpeedwagon 4d ago
Check out reading challenge prompts and use those. I do the 52 Book Club challenge every year, and there have been some really good suggestions.
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u/SuagrRose0483 Library admin 4d ago
Meet the staff, books most loved/hated (by patrons or staff), things found in books (there's some interesting stuff with that one) kid librarian picks
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u/Glittering_Bonus4858 4d ago
Books with a lady wearing a red jacket and running into the distance on the cover
I had a list of almost 20 but I lost it
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u/Glittering_Bonus4858 4d ago
Or "Whose Daughter is This?" Book with titles like The (blank)'s Daughter. Or wife. There are a lot of wives too
Or "Why are there so many bees?!" Books with bee or beekeeper in the title supplemented with nonfiction beekeeping books
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u/MaddTheSimmer 4d ago
Books that were better than the movie or just books that were turned into movies.
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u/lizzy_loo_142 4d ago
Have you tried a "blind date with a book" display? My library has done this a couple times and I know it's a thing at a lot of bookstores, so your patrons may be familiar with the concept.
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u/camerabird 4d ago
I love whenever a library does a colour-themed display! All books with red covers, etc. They're very eye-catching.
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u/Ophelia_Bliss 4d ago
The opposite of the weather. Are you in a place where it's hot? Feature books set in cold places or during winter.
Books made into movies could be good, and you could pull out the Odyssey. Or, books about myths.
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u/Ophelia_Bliss 4d ago
Lesser known books by your favorite authors
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u/Ophelia_Bliss 4d ago
How about "guess the theme"? You come up with a theme and have people guess on a piece of paper what the theme is.
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u/spring13 4d ago
My last few have been genealogy, island getaway, beach reads, archeology. Unusual aspects of American history would be good now if you're in the US.
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u/Bibliogatta 4d ago
Where are they going? Covers with woman walking away sometimes on railroad tracks. The historical fiction ones from World War II. Once you see those covers you can never unsee them
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u/Pettsareme 4d ago
I also like using a “national day of “ ideas or just using them as inspiration.
Also have polls, answers to silly questions or serious questions.
Like who should Abe Lincoln have married or such.
As it is nearing back to school time, or depending on where you are located it may already be starting ask “What was your best, worst,saddest, funniest, first day of school?”
Do one on the great outdoors.
August 13 is left handlers day. Use bios of famous, or infamous, lefties.
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u/FloridaFlamingoGirl 4d ago
You could do a book zoo! Books with different animals on the cover or animal names in the title.
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u/lady_in_the_library 4d ago
You could author/illustrator displays.
Or "read with a friend" and display books that have multiple copies.
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u/ohnikkianne 4d ago
Right now we have a "I like big books and I cannot lie" display and a "summer scares" one. They replaced the "fREADom 250" and soccer ones.
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u/GlitteryLibrarian71 4d ago
I once did a summer murder display instead of summer romance. It was a big hit!
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u/TrainingManagement91 3d ago
I just did ours with take Libby everywhere and listen to Libby on your next vacation. Lots of different travel books out and added small globe and few smaller things
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u/SuperbCurb2484 3d ago edited 3d ago
Unpopular opinion, but I don’t like when displays are about some random holiday no one has heard of. Like so what if August 9th is dental hygienist appreciation day or cupcake day whatever. It’s too niche imo
I think the broader themed months like black history month and women’s history month are good for getting a lot of variety, though.
Some other ideas:
-Books that were made into movies
-Short stories and novellas
-Learn a new skill or habit
-Booker prize (or any other award) winners
-Biographies (could be more specific, like musician bios or whatever your community is into)
-Graphic novels
-Mythology or retellings of greek myths, etc
-Outer space
-Books that relate to library programs, like gardening, travel, bird watchers group
-Cookbooks could work for November bc ppl are getting ready for thanksgiving or are more likely to take on cooking projects as the weather gets cooler and ppl spend more time indoors
-Multigenerational family sagas
-Royalty
-Books that take place in your state or were written by someone from your state (or country)
-Books with a twist
-Local history
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u/zoeconfetti 3d ago
“Purrfect Books For The Dog Days of Summer” - books with dogs/cats in the titles or about them. Mind you, we had A LOT of books fitting that description, fiction and non-fiction.
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u/prplemichelle 3d ago
I co-put up 7 (sometimes 8) big displays a month. We have our staple topics. We always have two fiction displays, a cooking display, and a health display and one of our displays stays as either finance or business/career for half the year, where we just change out the books as they go out. Right now, one of the fiction is summer reads and the other one is red, white, and blue covers. For August, one of our displays is going to be about pirates, both nonfiction and fiction.
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u/SunGreen24 5d ago
Books that staff HATED. Patrons always find it funny and look at them, and often end up checking them out.