You may have noticed a common factor in the ideas you have been engaging with in this course - they all start from the reader’s point of view.

Traditional promotions in libraries start from the stock. They begin by selecting titles according to a theme, an author, a genre or a seasonal time of year.  All these can work but you will find that your promotions can have a stronger dynamic when you start from a reading experience or a reading need. The connection to your readers’ lives is more powerful.

Consider the image on this page which was designed to appeal to a young adult audience. It suggests excitement, transformation, travelling away from yourself to explore other identities. It is edgy, complex and quite dark but with a very positive message about the power of reading. (The design on the book cover is by Stefan Sagmeister, who has designed album covers for The Rolling Stones and Jay Z, and he was delighted to give an agreement for its use in our image for public and school libraries as he loved this approach to promoting reading.)

A reader-centred approach like this allows us to escape the boundaries of genre and theme. You can bring a great mix of books into it from across the library – biography, travel, psychology, the supernatural - as well as fiction.

Once you start thinking from the reader’s point of view rather than the librarian’s, it will ripple out to affect other aspects of the library – events, displays, collection development, staff training ….  What might your library space or stock layout look like if you started from the customer or student view?

It’s not just your readers who will benefit from exploring this approach further.  Whatever your role in the library, continuing professional development can bring out your creative side and refresh your practice.  If you have enjoyed this taste of what Opening the Book courses do, take a look at the full range we offer.