Search

Librarian Design Share

inspiration for library creatives

Open Search
Month

December 2014

Holiday Hours

Like many libraries out there, my library has reduced hours during the holidays.  This creates quite a bit of confusion for patrons, and it’s compounded when our signage looks like this:

hours before

Sure, all the information you need is right there, but it’s so hard to read.  I made this schedule to hang outside the library, and after printing it, I realized how bad it was. I took the same information and rearranged it into a calendar format:

hours after

Way better, right?  It’s so much clearer when we’re open and when we close early.  The color and graphics make the sign just a bit friendlier too.  It literally took 5 additional minutes to insert a table into Publisher and find the snowflake clip art than it did to make the block of text from the first sign.  I’d say it’s worth the effort!

We’d love to see examples of revised signage you all have tackled.  Submit your designs here!

0

Happy Medical Librarians Month (a little late)

October was National Medical Librarians month.  I realize that’s in the rear-view mirror now, but still wanted to share what we did to celebrate in my library this year.

I was inspired by a trip that Veronica and I took to the local Portland library while we were there for a conference.  The Multnomah County Library had a great display on their counter of colorful business cards with simple, effective icons and messages like the one below (I know, I should have collected them all!):

cardfront

I liked the idea that patrons could easily pick up the card to learn more about and learn more about the library’s services.  I wanted to implement this somehow at my own library. After brainstorming with staff, we decided to use the five weeks of October, which is National Medical Librarians Month, to celebrate our services. However, with our limited resources (read: me printing on cardstock on the staff machine and then using the paper cutter), we decided to make our takeaways just a bit bigger into the shape of bookmarks that we already are used to cutting and displaying.

Below are the five features we decided to highlight and the Publisher bookmarks (fronts on the top row and backs on the bottom) that I created:

bkmks

We were happy with the candy-colored printed bookmarks and thought that it would be really cool if these giveaways could coordinate with colors of REAL candy.  This involved a carefully planned trip to the grocery (thank goodness it was near Halloween with lots of candies to choose from), and some masterful exhibit making involving colored books, journals, and all the containers we could find in the library.  Here’s how it turned out week-by-week…please excuse the amateur photography:

Our library as a physical space:

orange

 

Our mobile resources:

IMG_1111

Our collections:

b1photo

Our educational offerings:

rml

Our archives:

photo purple2

 

Our patrons loved the changing displays and anticipated the colors, candies, and services they would see the next week.  Of course, more than anything, they liked the candy, but lots of good conversations were sparked in the month of October.

Do you celebrate months or certain days in your library?  We’d love to see your pics and materials if you do!  If you would like a PDF or the original Publisher document for the bookmarks, you can download them for adaption from the Librarian Design Share Google Drive.

5

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑

%d bloggers like this: