PASSIONATE ABOUT SCHOOL LIBRARIES
I love creating displays. I love the design process, the coming up with ideas, the crafting, but I especially love the double-takes students and staff give an eye-catching display. I love when books just fly off the display shelf. We’ve done a range of displays this term, which have been lots of fun. These are some of my favourites.
I love planning my school library’s displays. Whether working as a library aide or as a teacher librarian, one of my favourite parts of my job is to plan and prep the displays – physical and digital – for the library. I know it’s not a favourite task of all librarians, while other love it. I am constantly amazed at the creativity people reach and the lengths they go to to achieve jaw-dropping arrangements. I am not that creative or skilled by any means, but I am pretty good at planning. And I’ve found that if I have my displays planned for the year, including pop-ups, big creative displays and simple book collections, then I am far more likely to actually achieve a rotation of displays, rather than just leaving one up for the whole term (been there, done that). Continue reading
New year, new school, new pop-up displays. Some argue that displays fall under the role of the library tech or aide (if you are lucky to have them), however, as a aide or a teacher librarian, I love creating library displays. It’s such a great way to get to know the collection, pull and promote books that need some love, highlight diverse books, new books, important topics or just some favourites.
I am loving the display shelves in my new school library. There are two vertical shelves and one horizontal setup on the library and they make putting up pop-up displays so much easier. Here are a few from the first term this year.
I used the Cricut machine to cut out some detective silhouettes. The font used to create the letters is Earwig Factory.
I love creating displays. If you follow this blog at all, you will have seen some of my display creations. They range from a few simple shapes cut on our trusty library Cricut machine to more elaborate constructions. But sometimes, I don’t have time to do a full display. I’ve been enjoying creating pop-up displays. These are usually a collection of themed resources with a related poster and bookmarks. They sometimes have a connection to a particular special day or event or are themed. Here are a few of my most recent pop-up displays.
National Science Week
Our theme for Term 2 this year is Create. It is the theme for ALIA’s Library and Information Week, and I have used their AMAZING artwork as the basis for our display.
Every year, ALIA share some fantastic ideas and graphics for their Library and Information Week and it is becoming my habit to base my Term 2 theme and displays around their theme. I adore this year’s theme Create. It fits so perfectly with what our library is all about. And those graphics are just amazing. On their website, ALIA share a range of themed graphics and I poster printed our main display from one them. It turned out really well (if I do say so myself.) Already it has caught the eye of our students (though we only have a handful actually in the library, due to COVID).
As many of our students are learning from home, we will share our create theme via our library homepage, social media and online book clubs. I am hoping to turn our main circulation display into a “Create Mural”, sharing photos of all the things students have been making at home and in the library.
Our first entrance way display in the Create theme features cookbooks.
I was able to attend the Year 6 camp to Canberra last year and by far and away my favourite stop on the busy tour was the Deep Space Centre at the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex. Regaled by stories of the space missions currently in space, the science behind the search for life on Mars, and the vastness of the universe, we sat under a giant model of the solar system, next to a model of Rover Curiosity and were shown pictures of Mars’s most recent sunrise. We were given the links to help scientists categories galaxies and basically I was just in nerd heaven. Creating a space display went straight to the top of my to-do list.
Inspired by the work of Professor Margaret Merga, I wanted to talk to students about the benefits of reading. At one school, I am fortunate to be working with a teacher librarian who has designed a whole year 8 library lessons course around Merga’s research and the benefits of reading. At my other workplace, I placed an infographic about the benefits of reading into this year’s library welcome booklet and created this display, which sits above our student printers, hoping it will catch the eyes of students who may not regularly pick up a book.
This display was the idea of one of my fellow librarians, who suggested a buddy read display when she noted how many books we had duplicate copies of.
This is by no means an original idea. I’d seen the phrase with related displays on Pinterest and thought it would be a great replacement for my old Australia Day display I traditionally use in the first week back of school.
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