My first ever library display

When I started as the school librarian I had no experience what so ever in running a library. After the first year of getting my feet wet I decided it was time to start sprucing the library up. This was the first display I designed and made.
The idea was to promote reading in general and to fill in a large blank pinup board.

The blue fringe with fish was added later as part of an origami display I made.

Display Elements
Cascading books
Open paperbacks
Open and closed picture books
How to
Cascading books
This is an idea I got from the Paperazzi exhibition in Albany. It is made by cutting the pages of the book so they look like the are falling out. With two of the books I added coloured pages for some interest. To hand them up I feed some wire along the spine added some beads and other items.

Open books
For this I visited the secondhand shops and bought a range of paperbacks and picture books(make sure they are ones you don't want to use later). I wanted to have them stay open when i pinned them up so I stuck toothpicks inside along the spine. By doing this the pages can't close so when pinned open on the wall they fan open.
Happy reading
From the Library Lady

Father's Day 2012

I wanted to make an interactive display this year for Father’s day (which in Australia is always the 1^st Sunday in September). “After having a look on the internet I came up with this display,

 

Display Elements

Ties

Word cloud

Two titles

I love Dad because… Cards

Copious amounts of blue tack J

 

How to

 

Main title

 

For the main title I went to my local second hand shop and bought enough ties for a tie per letter (for this title you need 21). I the printed the letter’s in black on yellow paper and cut letters leaving a border.

The letters are attached using strong double sided tape. I tried staples but I had trouble getting through the material.

I hung up a line and attached the ties using pegs.

Word Cloud

 

For this I searched on line for as many father’s day word activities as I could find e.g. word searches I then typed these word into Wordle to create my cloud. Once I had a cloud I was happy with I printed it in black and white then enlarged it on the photocopier and made 5 copies. I then cut out the words and stuck them onto coloured card. Once the words had been cut from the card I recreated the Wordle on the window (here is were the blue tack starts being gobbled up). I place another one on the other side of the window to hide all the blue tack dots J
 

I love you because...

Once again for the letters I printed the black on coloured card and cut out leaving a border.

These were then attached over the area were the students would but their cards.

I love you because… Cards

 

For this I made up these simple cards that the students could write in why they loved their dad. I did censor these to a certain extent as we have high school students who like to take the micky. These were then stuck on the library doors This is were the rest of the blue tack dissappears.

Happy Reading
From the Library Lady

Remembrance Day 2011

Here is the display I made last year for Remembrance Day

Display elements

Posters supplied by the department of veteran affairs Australia. 2011 was the centenary of the Royal Australian Navy

Poppies

Poems “In Flanders field” and “We shall keep the faith”

Lest we forget cross

Poster with Australia’s war statistics

Title

Books from Fiction and Non-fiction

How to

Poppies

For the poppies along the bottom I made them using this tutorial

Tissue Paper Flowers for Any Occasion by Marie LeBaron of makeandtakes.com

I started using buttons for the centre but in the end because I made so many I just turned over the end of the pipe cleaner to make the centre of the flower

 

Poems

I found copies of both poems “In Flanders Field” and “We shall keep the Faith on the internet”

I then created an A4 size poster (I used this size because our colour printer only does up to A4 pages). I then added free pictures from the internet relating to the poems. If you want to reuse these posters it would be best to laminate them. They can easily be used for both ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day every year.

 

I also found this picture and included it in the display

Sorry I don't remember were I got it from

Cross

This was simply made by finding a blank cross on Microsoft clipart and adding the words “Lest we forget”.  I than photocopied it to the size I wanted.

Feel free to copy  and use

War Statistics

This took a little searching but I found a couple of sources that had this information and compiled it to make a poster of the basic statistics. For the background a found an Anzac picture. Because of the amount of information I had to make it on two A4 pages and then cut them out and made an A3 size poster.

Title

The title was made by printing the letters in black on red paper and then cut to leave a border. Once again if you want to use the title again it would be best to laminate it. You may also want to do extra numbers at the same time so that you can change the date to reflect the current year

Books

To complete the display I found books throughout the library dealing with war stories mainly Australian but any war books were fine. I put two on the wall as part of the display and the rest on the shelf below. I always allow students to borrow any of the books on the display as the idea of doing these displays is to promote the reading of these books.

 

Happy Reading
The Library Lady

Welcome

The purpose of this blog is to help me keep a record of the displays that I have made for our school library.
Who am I?
I am the librarian of the John Calvin School in Albany. I have no formal training in this area but have learned to love this job with a passion. I love seeing the children's eyes light up when they find that book. The biggest thrill I get from this job is knowing that I can help struggling readers become confident avid readers. One of my own children struggled for years with reading although he had a constant improvement he was always on the lower end of his age group. But the teachers and I kept persisting and searching for books he would like then one day he got it and now in year 7 he can read books such as Eragon, Rangers Apprentice with ease. If I can help other children achieve the same results than I have helped to make the world a better place for that child.
I love to make my library a bright and vibrant place were students want to come and discover new treasures. Over the years that I have been learning my trade I have found lots of inspiration from others via the internet so I would love to give back and share my ideas with others and who knows maybe inspire them.
So along with my 4 sons 2 dogs and numerous students I would like to share my library journey with you and hope that I can help to inspire more children to read everyday with passion.

From The library lady as forgetful children lovingly refer to me as.
Happy reading