Library Bulletin Board Displays

[Jane Spies]

I am looking for some ideas for library displays. I want to move beyond the "display new books" type bulletin board. I was thinking of setting up a display of interesting objects and have the students guess their uses and research their origins. Any other suggestions?

[Maureen Smyth]

Hi Jane,

I have tried some interactive displays recently. I asked students & staff to post the name of a childhood book they loved reading. They really enjoyed looking back at their favorites & reading each others picks (esp. teachers). My current display asks for a favorite adaptation (book/comic/short story to film). I placed a list of some adaptations near by to spark ideas & to illustrate how many movies start as books, etc.

It worked with my 7-12 students, but the Middle School grades esp. enjoyed it. We had library aides create book and scene clapper shaped slips for students to fill out. We added them to the bulletin board.

[Franki]

I had two that I liked this fall. One was on how we choose books and kids 8X10 photos accompanied their words about why they were choosing the books they chose. The board showed a variety of reasons readers choose books. Thinking about it, I wish I had included teacher choices. One of our district librarian features different staff members on the endcaps and highlights each as a reader--what they read, what they are currently reading, etc.

Another I did was one called "Tools for Learning". It included photos of kids using various tools in the library to support their learning--books, laptops, iPod Touches, microscope, pencils, games, cameras, Legos, etc.

I am so ready to change my boards so I am hoping lots of people share. I am out of ideas! Thanks for starting this thread.

[Katie Day]

Have you seen this website? Creative Library Displays

Here's another good one: a wiki devoted to Classroom Displays and Bulletin Boards

[Franki]

Great sites--thanks!

[Katie Day]

Actually, you reminded me of what I do every January (and must start working on) -- my New Year display highlights about 10 different anniversaries alongside books that relate to them.

For example, in 2008, I used anniversaries like these:

-- 1260 years ago the first printed newspaper was produced (in Beijing, China)
-- 900 years William the Conqueror started building the Tower of Lond
-- 90 years ago 50 to 100 million people died in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic
-- 40 years ago Martin Luther King was assassinated

You can see a few photos from my 2007 and 2008 displays here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thelibrarianedge/tags/newyear/show/ (Can't find the photos from last year...)

Where will I get the anniversaries for 2010? You can just search for "2010" and "anniversary" or "anniversaries" and see what comes up.

For example, a quick search just now turned up a Yahoo ASK forum entry that yields these anniversaries for 2010:

- It'll include the 50th anniversary of Gary Powers being shot down, founding of OPEC, independence for Cameroon, Togo, Somalia, Cyprus, Congo.Ivory Coast, Gabon, Central African Republic, Chad, Senegal, Nigeria, Mauritania, JFK's election.
- It'll be 65 years since the end of WW2.
- 75 years since the New Deal,
- 100 since the founding of the Union of South Africa
- 200 since the start of the Mexican war for independence, Badajoz fell to the French,
- 250 since George III took the throne
- 500 since the Portuguese conquered Goa.
- 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.
- 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain
- 20th anniversary of German unification

On Dec 31 each year the Telegraph (UK) newspaper publishes upcoming anniversaries for the year, e.g., here is the one for 2009 -- so I'll be waiting to check that.

Writers' groups seem to follow upcoming big anniversaries (looking for article/book topics) -- and here's one UK site - ideas4writers.co.uk -- that gives you a snippet of anniversaries for March 2010 (there's a book you can buy to get more).

Wikipedia has pages for most years, so you can pick a year and see if you can find any anniversaries that would be meaningful to your students, e.g., I'll be looking at years like 1010, 1510, 1910, 1960, etc.

If anyone knows of any other websites that would give anniversaries of events, please let me know. There are quite a few websites "on this day in history", but not so many re yearly anniversaries.

I have an old big paperback (copyright 1979) called "The Timetables of History: a horizontal linkage of people and events" by Bernard Grun and I usually browse through that looking for even-numbered anniversary years. Must get that off the shelf!

Another display idea is to highlight the various "Year of the ________" that organizations like the U.N. identify.

[Katie Day]

p.s. Just saw two posts over on OZTL_NET (http://www.csu.edu.au/cstl/oztl_net/) today on the same topic, though the person was looking for book anniversaries in particular.

Mandie Gardiner of St. Michael's College suggested this link --

http://www.ila.org/events/pdf/Bookelation.pdf