BULLETIN BOARDS & DISPLAY : Christmas

          I'm careful to only put displays up that mention "Winter Break" or "the Holidays," so I don't make anyone feel excluded regarding whatever their religious or non-religious deal is.  But I know that personally I'm not religious, and Santa and his reindeer were NOT present at the supposed birth of Baby Jesus, so I think it's okay to have those elements on display.  Anyway, here's what I put up this month:

The big central bulletin board, with Krampus and Narnia

          The Krampus is a real German Christmas legend/tradition that I incorporate every year because it's so freaky and fun.

I drew this Krampus depiction a few years ago, to terrify all the little children

It was way too fun for me to draw this frightened, crying little elf

The glass display cabinet with our tree and our Secret Santa gifts packed inside

          The last couple years we've started this cool tradition with the class that meets in the library 4 days a week.  (It's kind of like a homeroom class)  We do a Secret Santa gift exchange, and as soon as the kids start bringing their gifts in, we put them under the tree in the locking cabinet.  So the cabinet starts out kind of empty-looking, but fills up by the last day before Winter Break, when we have our gift exchange.

Well, they DO

Every library should have a glowing deer to preside over the graphic novels & comics

It's a little lackluster in execution, but I like the idea

I'm big on promoting the idea of "leisure reading"

Christmas lights strung behind the circ desk

This is my end-of-the-day, running low on holiday steam, WTF decoration.  Are they candy canes?  I think so.

          And of course I had to decorate myself a little, since I was wearing a green tie and needed something red.  Plus I just like any excuse to use my old-school Dymo label maker with interchangeable colors.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS - READ A BOOK"

COMING SOON

Gotta keep things fresh in the 'brary.

          When I started working here I thought it was weird that we had this big Whiteboard right behind the circulation desk.  Then eventually we found cool ways to use it.
          The "Coming Soon" wall is very popular with our students.  We highlight the series they're most frantic for.  They check the Coming Soon wall all the time, and let me tell you, we'd better have these books the DAY they're released.
          The most annoying part of maintaining it is figuring out the series #.  For some reason a LOT of teen and YA series don't want to make it CLEAR what # each book is.  I'm assuming it's a marketing tactic, so readers don't get put off by a book clearly marked "#9" or whatever, if they haven't read the 8 ones previous.  Anyway, sometimes I have to check Amazon and even the author's website before I find the #.
          Our students very specifically want to read series in order, starting from #1.  When I was a kid, I didn't mind reading #3, then backing up and reading the first two.  I thought it was kind of cool, almost like turning them into prequels.