A few weeks ago, a woman approached the circulation desk where myself and my friend, V.V., were stationed. The woman was looking for a book she started a year ago and never finished. Sure, we can help with that, what was it called? She couldn't remember the title, the author, or the plot. Is there anything else you might remember about it? We have a pretty good record of manifesting something from very little. She thought about it some more before telling us she was certain that the word "Paris" was in the title. Nothing else? Nope. Just that the word "Paris" was in the title and we immediately accepted our defeat.
Then, we devised the perfect library book display.
Publishers love trends. And Paris is a big trend right now in fiction. I've had many patrons seeking Reader's Advisory specify that they only want books that take place in some historical version of France (usually WWII era or late 19th century). We never fail to fill those request with an abundance of titles. In our small library, there are over forty books specifically with "Paris" in the title, and many, many more on France. And we are really small. For better context on how popular Paris is in publishing right now, here's a sample list from GoodReads that contains books mostly published in the past decade: https://bit.ly/3nkjGjO .
Anyways, V.V. and I were inspired and we grabbed every book from our stacks with the word Paris in the title. This is what we built:
I broke out some acrylic paints and
gahtered books about Alphonse
Mucha and created a reading
"advertisement" poster.
V.V. is an expert in paper craft
(our resident origami queen) and she
built the Eiffel Tower from simple
printer paper.
Across from the book display is our mini patron art museum. So naturally, it became the mini Library Louvre. The pyramid was built with black construction paper, old paperback pages (romance novel, of course), and glue.
And for a final touch, our little library cat became a French citizen.
Passe une bonne journée!
If you want to borrow any of our ideas or want to develop your own, please pin this blog to your Pinterest:
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