As more libraries start and continue to utilize the service of Library of Things and Museum Passes, we are left with one troubling problem, how to merchandize these items for patrons? Libraries offer so many amazing programs and services and yet, it’s so hard to market those items to our patrons. What good are the best ideas of services and items if we can’t share them with our patrons?
Back in April, one of my staff and I went to NJLA’s Small Libraries Unconference and came across a great idea for small libraries to think of the footprint of our displays. I wish I could remember the library that presented this, but they bought a peg board like you might see at souvenir shop and bought luggage tags to add them to a rotating display.
It was a genius idea, and one that would help our small library. We had been using a popular method in NJ libraries of using old DVD cases, with a design from Canva. While this technically worked, we ran into a lot of problems as it took up a lot of space and also patrons were often confused that they were DVDs about the subject area like Bird Watching or Electronic Drums, instead of the actual items.
It took 3 full months to complete this project. This included finding a 4 sided peg board that rotated, ordering the pegs, ordering 4 different sets of luggage tags and hating them all and returning them, creating our own luggage tag template in Canva, tying them with lanyards, then the actual work of coordinating the barcodes and creating a barcode index card box to scan them for checkouts. Finally, we were done and behold our beautiful kiosk!
We have one side of Museum Passes, 13 in total, and three sides of Library of Things items, 63 in total. It’s been a good time to assess those collections and see what has been circulating. Over the last few months, I have been adding children’s items as we have lots of grandparents with visiting kids who can borrow toys, games, and activities without having to purchase them.
The kiosk has been “live” for about a week now and we have way more items in circulation! Patrons love it because many of them commented that they never looked at the DVDs and didn’t know what they were. It also takes up about 1/4 of the area that the table and cases took up. Patrons can “see” more easily what is available and what we have to offer. It’s a conversation piece and really fun to browse. I look forward to seeing how this evolves. Especially, since we created our own luggage tags in Canva, so we can update this as much as needed, whenever possible.