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Getting books to move

Lots of interesting stuff this week (at least to me).
I was thrilled to see this graphic.
bookcoverscolour.jpg
Image: www.flickr.com/photos/davepattern/2327458116/
(Check out Colourphon)
Have you ever done colour-blocked displays of books? Did you know this can increase circulation? I’m not talking about books dispoayed by btopic, but just based on the colour of the cover!
Here’s some headers (Be imaginative with a colour printer):
Better Read than Red
Extreme Reading in Black and Blue
Orange You Glad We Have Some Great Stuff To Read
Think In The Pink
Mellow Yellow Reading
Black and White and Read All Over
Brown Books to Borrow
Reduce. Re-Use, Recycle – Borrow a Green Book for Earth Day
Books for Ransom (Make the sign out of letters cut from the newspaper)
Green Books and Ham (Displayed with ith a stuffed pig)
Also, did you see this? Borders Bookostores did some research and in-store tests. It has found a simple way to boost sales. According to the Wall Street Journal the retailer is displaying three times as many books “face out.” Shelf Awareness notes that ” … The new approach has led to sales increases ‘in the double digits’ and has led to the removal of 5%-10% of the average store’s titles — many of which sell only one copy a year in each store.” “The change will be apparent in most Borders stores within six weeks and be most noticeable in categories like children’s, food, cooking, travel, art and photography but less so in fiction.”
Interesting. I wonder how much of our collection is face-out and how much more we can do to increase circ. I know lots of libraries are doing a lot of interesting stuff. These tactics are cheap and cheerful.
I was inspired by a presentation yesterday by Joan Bernstein and Kathy Schalk-Greene about great techniques for libraries to increase circulation. Learn more at their website TRADING SPACES
REINVENTING THE LIBRARY ENVIRONMENT
Stephen

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Posted on: March 13, 2008, 10:00 am Category: Uncategorized

By: stephen

rev="post-1623" 4 comments

4 Responses

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  1. Peter Alsbjer said
    on March 14, 2008 4:37 am

    Of course you can also do this digitally. Check out the online library catalog from University of Huddersfield, UK: http://webcat.hud.ac.uk/perl/colour.pl?hex=ffff00
    where you can search books by entering the hex value code.
    I don’t really know if this is just for fun or really useful. Or to just to prove that it can be done.
    Anyhow, it can be helpful to those “The book had a red cover, thats all I remember”-questions.

  2. Karim Khan said
    on March 18, 2008 2:46 pm

    Cheap?
    Let’s say you have a collection of 100,000 items — none superseded or in bad condition, because you weed appropriately and vigorously. So to remove 5-10% of your collection, you are throwing out 5,000-10,000 items.
    So if we say the average item is worth $20 (http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA507329.html#chart) — an underestimate, surely —
    5,000 x $20 = $100,000
    10,000 x $20 = $200,000
    So, even not taking into account the differences in USER expectations for libraries and bookstores, Barnes & Noble’s idea takes 100-200 K worth of material owned by the library as a loss.
    Face out is a great way to market materials but our calculus in libraries must be different than that in bookstores. Check your mission statements, librarians — do they mention circulation statistics, or diversity and meeting users needs?
    Because throwing out 200K worth of material? Cheap? Really, Mr. Abram?
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Honestly – who said throw out books? Not me. If you read the post properly you’ll note that was Borders. I am a librarian not a bookseller! Only a moron librarian would discard books that had a chance of circulating. Reading a post carefully is a good practice.
    However, if we don’t think our circulation is a measurement of success in PL’s then I don’t know what is. If facing the books out increases circulation – and hundreds of libraries have done this to great success – then it’s a pretty cheap way to do it. It IS possible to take small parts of a model that we find elsewhere and adapt it to libraries needs.
    SA

  3. Karim Khan said
    on March 20, 2008 3:32 pm

    With all due respect, sir, there are many librarians who would throw out material that has a good chance of circulating — much less any chance at all. It does happen in public libraries every day. And I fear those people may take the Borders information and use it as evidence that endorses an increase in that sort of action.
    I am totally for face out display of material as much as possible, and probably a little more than possible. Color displays are great — I believe the first one I did was a red display when the first edition of Sidney Sheldon’s “If Tomorrow Comes” was a new book. Except for the throwing out stock part, I’m excited about every part of these approaches.
    As for how well I read — well — I stand by my point. A reasonable reader would presume that the sentence “These tactics are cheap and cheerful.” applies to the tactics previously mentioned in the post. Why is that not so? And why go all “ad hominem” on my reading comprehension when you’re called on it?
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Mostly because you accused me of saying something I didn’t say, and now suggesting that I am personally encouraging silly actions that I don’t support. Of course there are bad librarians who make bad decisions but they are a tiny segment. There are always bad apples in every profession. Some people do bad things. I am an optimist I guess. I think that most library folks do great work in libraries and I try not to focus on that . I would never choose to not point to good ideas because someone might do something stupid or to write a caution that makes people think I don’t think they can think things through. It’s just distrustful.
    SA

  4. Dave Pattern said
    on March 27, 2008 3:27 am

    Peter — it was very much a “proof of concept”, but there’s no reason why the closest HTML color name couldn’t be dropped into a MARC field to make it searchable and sortable.
    Huddersfield Public Library did this a couple of years ago (which was the inspiration to try something silimar using the cover scans): http://www.flickr.com/photos/organised/98972109/
    p.s. Stephen — any chance of attribution for the image please? Ta! 😉 http://www.flickr.com/photos/davepattern/2327458116/
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Dave:
    THANKS FOR THE REMINDER TO ADD AN ATTRIBUTION.
    Cheers,
    SAA