Great Displays for Your Library Step by Step

Citation

Jax, J.N. (2009), "Great Displays for Your Library Step by Step", Collection Building, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 171-171. https://doi.org/10.1108/01604950910999846

Displays, whether virtual or physical, play an integral role in promoting and marketing a library's vast collections of resources. Better yet, seemingly anyone can make a library display, but is the display effective in engaging users, stimulating thought or boosting library use? Susan Phillips contributes to the many books and articles devoted to this important topic. Phillips' work is organized into 11 chapters for a total of 46 displays on what appear to be popular subjects that include: authors, pop culture, genres, traditions, patriotism, art and architecture, cultures, people, nature, pastimes, and the mind. Each display example includes an introduction, genesis of the display idea, assembly specifications and further ways to enhance or augment the author's subjects. The author incorporates ways to minimize costs and emphasizes the fact that some of the most effective library displays include borrowing items directly attributable to the theme, which adds extra authenticity and helps capture user attention.

Phillips' resource can be compared to Mary Brown and Rebecca Power's Exhibits in Libraries (McFarland, 2006) and Mark Schaeffer's Library Displays Handbook (H.W. Wilson, 1991). Phillips' even makes reference to Schaeffer's work in her introduction regarding the design of displays. All of these works serve as useful guides to generating library displays. Phillips' topics are varied, diverse (from Dracula to anorexia), and have wide appeal. When comparing resources, Phillips' work stands apart due to its specific focus, which appears to cater to the swift, easy, practical and everyday construction of physical library displays. While her display resource is oriented toward public or school library audiences, the material can provide adequate inspiration for an academic setting given appropriate consideration.

A potential drawback is that Phillips' work does not address creating displays for library web pages, which seems strange given the ever growing popularity of audiences who regularly peruse the internet and perform online social networking activities. Perhaps consulting Martin Kalfatovic's 2002 work dealing with online exhibits and displays (Creating a Winning Online Exhibition: A Guide for Libraries, Archives and Museums. American Library Association, Chicago, is warranted to address this deficit. Despite this, Phillips provides a solid step‐by‐step text that covers minute details, such as citing applicable, appealing and pertinent quotes to augment display creation.

The chapters on displays are very readable and partitioned into a format that facilitates the easy setup/creation of a display. For example, to construct a display on the environmentalist John Muir, the author provides necessary background on the topic, inspiration or rationale as to why the topic interested her, a guide for assembling the display in terms of arrangement, color and materials utilized in the display, plus additional ideas for exploration and customization. A chapter on sample display construction techniques provides additional help to those requiring this type of assistance. Other strengths are her extensive bibliography (over 200 sources), which gives ample impetus for minds pondering displays on similar topics, and an extremely detailed index.

Despite the author's claim about not being inspired by books written on the subject of library displays, Phillips offers a resource that allows both experienced and inexperienced library personnel to better market library collections and make eye‐catching library displays – albeit primarily for high school or public library audience. Readers can quickly peruse the table to contents, index, or extensive bibliography to identify display themes of interest and become excited enough to create an outstanding library display.