Display Tips & Tricks

When creating displays, it is very important to make sure you have enough materials to replenish the display. But there are a few pitfalls!

Here are few rules to follow when creating displays:



1. Don’t overcrowd

When setting up a display, be careful not to overcrowd the display. It’s important to create a display that is easy for customers to browse. The titles in the above display are difficult to read and not very inviting.



2. Don’t skimp

The above display is easy to read and looks balanced; however, if a customer decides to check out one or two of the titles, the display will look empty. To avoid this pitfall, be sure to add a few more titles to fill out the display. If possible, use book easels available from library vendors.

3. Just Right!

The best solution to avoid the above pitfalls is to create a display that is balanced and eye catching. In the above example, the display is balanced and each title is clearly visible. In addition, materials are readily available to replenish the display, as needed. Always remember to display replacement books with the spine out.

By following these three simple rules, your displays will be eye catching, inviting, and balanced.

SLRC Treasures: Humanities

The Humanities Department has a run of the Baltimore/Washington edition of the TV Guide from 1957 to the current issue, in paper. These are wonderful for the covers alone, remembering Father Knows Best, I Love Lucy, The Carol Burnett Show, The Man from UNCLE, and others. If you need to know the listing for a local program or just want to take a walk down memory lane, this collection is a great place to start.

Interested in an 1854 Italian English Dictionary? A pronouncing dictionary of Gaelic?A Hopi/English-English/Hopi dictionary?Or Yoruba/English? Want to look up a word in Middle English or see how Samuel Johnson defined “Lexicographer?” How about tracing the etymology of a Russian word or looking at a 1700 page Chinese dictionary from 1925? If you ask for bouji while in Haiti, what will happen? The Brothers Grimm compiled an historical dictionary of German, if you’d like to explore the history of that language. The Humanities Department has language dictionaries for most known languages and will be glad to share the information in them!

I keep repeating the same display themes. Where can I find some ideas for fun or timely displays?

Displays are a great way to share the library’s resources and creativity with your customers.

Here are a couple of sources for new display ideas:

• Chase’s Calendar of Events, upcoming holidays
• Community Events, Neighborhood Activities
• News, Scandals
• Readers’ Advisory:
• Databases: NoveList (RA & School Resources) and Books and Authors (Browse by Genre)
• Read-alikes
• Booklists
• Authors: Visiting Authors, Author Tributes, and Award Winners
• Web Search – Google, Flickr, Library Thing
• Popular Display Topics: Gardening, Home Improvement, Sports, Back to School, etc.

Another possibility is to ask your staff for ideas. What are their interests? What are some popular subjects that they have noticed customers’ checking out? One of the most popular displays in bookstores is the Staff Picks display; why not try this at your library?
You might also do an informal survey of your patrons.What kinds of displays do they want to see? What are popular topics in school projects and papers? Maybe there is an upcoming school theater production that could generate a display topic. Staying in touch with the activities and themes popular with your customers is a sure way to create timely displays.

SLRC Treasures: Business, Science & Technology Department

Probably the greatest hidden treasure of the Business, Science, and Technology (BST) Department at Maryland's State Library Resource Center is the collection of old department store catalogs, including Sears (1897-1993), Wards (1922-1985), and Penney’s (1984-2002). These catalogs allow you to walk down memory lane and see the styles and prices of the old days. Sears used to sell just about everything from clothing and furniture to pure-bred dogs and houses.

BST also owns a fantastic collection of old car shop manuals that date from 1929-1988 and owner’s manuals that range from 1913-1984. These manuals are great for people trying to restore a classic car, and the cars they cover include the Model T, Studebaker, Edsel, Reo Speedwagon, as well as the more common makes and models.

If you’re interested in historical business information, BST has old business directories, such as the Thomas Register (1925-2005), Moody’s Manuals, which also give financial information, (1900-present), and Best’s Insurance Reports (1915-present). The department also carries Jane’s Fighting Ships (1898-present) and Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft (1915-present).

The most important treasure in BST, however, is its crack staff of librarians, who will find your answer!

What Curriculum resources are available for homeschoolers?

Before seeking out curriculum resources, homeschoolers will want to familiarize themselves with laws and regulations governing homeschooling. Start out by taking a look at the Maryland State Department of Education’s Home Instruction Fact Sheet. The Baltimore County Public School system’s Homeschooling Guide is a particularly valuable guide for homeschoolers. Here, you will find sections on homeschooling procedures, frequently asked questions about homeschooling, and other useful resources. The Baltimore County Public School site also provides a convenient link to the Maryland State Department of Education’s Voluntary State Curriculum. Homeschoolers can view the objectives for each grade level for the subjects that the Maryland Home Schooling regulations require you to include in your curriculum.

Homeschoolers looking for ideas for a curriculum for their children should start at our Home Schooling How-to Guide. Go directly to the section on Curriculum and Lesson Plans and you will find links to a variety of free Web resources. You’ll find several print sources listed as well, which are available for borrowing through interlibrary loan. One of these, Cathy Duffy’s 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum, covers a number of related issues for homeschoolers such as learning styles and age appropriate learning.

It is always helpful to consult with other homeschoolers to see what curriculum and lesson planning resources they have used. You might want to try a national, state, or local homeschooling association. For links to these, go to the section of our guide that asks the question, “Are there home schooling organizations/associations?”. There, you will find information on such organizations as the American Homeschool Association, National Black Home Educators, and Homeschool Connections – Central Maryland.

If you would like more information on homeschooling, e-mail us through our Ask A Librarian service or contact the Social Science and History Department.

SLRC Treasures: Social Science & History Department

The State Library Resource Center’s Social Science and History Department contains a large variety of resources that can assist you with geographic, genealogical, and historical questions. We frequently work with customers attempting to find the village in which one or more of their ancestors were born. Sometimes, a village or town from the 19th century no longer exists and we need to look for it in older sources. For locations in Germany, Meyers’ Orts und Verkehrs Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs, a gazetteer published in 1912, is often helpful. Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas, published in 1906, provides detailed maps for various parts of Europe. Another gazetteer, Ritter’s Geographisch-Statistisches Lexikon, published in 1895, helps in identifying other geographic locales. Obviously, German language sources will be more oriented toward Germany, Austria, and other German-speaking countries.

What else can we offer to researchers? The Nouveau Dictionnaire de Geographie Universelle, a multi-volume source published in 1895, offers another approach to finding older towns and villages. Customers whose ancestors emigrated from the southern part of Italy might find Baedeker’s Southern Italy, a guidebook published in 1900 useful in familiarizing themselves with their ancestral homeland. Looking for a map of Charleston, South Carolina before the Civil War? Colton’s Atlas of the United States and Mexico from 1850 contains a nicely detailed street map. While we’re mentioning maps, don’t miss our digital exhibit of seventeenth and eighteenth century European maps. You’ll find colorful maps of various parts of Europe from 1629 through 1759.

Genealogists and historians aren’t the only audience for these types of resources. Aspiring authors of historical fiction need facts and authenticity to buttress their works. A writer needing to describe fin de siecle Vienna accurately would certainly benefit from perusing a 1900 edition of Baedeker’s Austria. One of the most interesting maps in our general Map Collection is the 1830 map of the former Kingdom of Poland. This huge map displays thousands of towns and cities as well as some topographic details. We have many other kinds of maps in our collection. A Guide to the General Map Collection will provide more information about our maps.

If you would like more information about our atlases, maps, and geographic resources, e-mail us through our Ask A Librarian service or contact the Social Science and History Department.

I have a customer who is interested in learning about Caribbean literature. Where should I start?

The African American Department carries some resources on Caribbean Literature. We have anthologies and critical interpretation titles that focus on women writers, politics, migration, etcetera, as well as interpretation of individual writers’ work. We also have a collection of fiction by Caribbean writers well known to the Americas such as Jamaica Kincaid, Paule Marshall, Edwidge Danticat, Claude McKay and Derek Walcott, just to name a few.

While the African American Collection focuses on a wide range of peoples of the African Diaspora, our selection of Caribbean Literature is smaller than what you may find in the Humanities and Fiction Departments. For instance, the Humanities Department has an Encylopedia on Caribbean Literature by D.H. Figueredo that may be a good place for you to start exploring your interest on the subject.

More SLRC Treasures: Sights & Sounds Department

The Sights and Sounds Department (SAS) just has so many treasures that we had to make it two blog entries! Learn more about the great hidden gems of SAS.

Frederick Wiseman Documentaries: Along with Ken Burns, “cinema verite” devotee Frederick Wiseman is considered one of today’s greatest living documentary filmmakers, but because Wiseman controls his own catalog and sells his films at prices (often several hundred dollars per title) beyond the budget of most institutions, few viewers get to see his critically acclaimed work. Thankfully, SLRC has purchased a number of his best titles over the years, including his groundbreaking Titicut Follies, High School, Hospital, Law and Order, and Near Death. The investment has paid off in terms of customer satisfaction, with the Baltimore City Paper honoring Pratt’s Wiseman collection as “Best of Baltimore” in 2005.

Annenberg/CPB Foreign Language Videos: Like Frederick Wiseman videos, these foreign language videos, funded by Annenberg/CPB (a non-profit dedicated to promoting innovation in schools), are prohibitively expensive for most institutions. But their “total immersion” approach (in which viewers are forced to listen, speak and read only in that foreign language) has been critically acclaimed. SLRC’s Annenberg/CPB series include Destinos (a 52-episode video instructional series for college and high school classrooms and adult learners that teaches speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in Spanish), French in Action (a 52-episode video series using professor Pierre Capretz’s immersion method to increase fluency in French, while introducing French culture), and Connect with English (a 50-episode video series designed to teach English as a second language to high school, college, and adult-aged foreign language speakers).

“Eyes on the Prize” Videos and DVDs: Though now readily available on DVD, this award-winning 14-hour documentary series about the American Civil Rights Movement – originally broadcast in 1987 as a PBS TV mini-series - was long out of circulation (due to copyright issues with its archival footage) until 2006. During those years, SLRC always had the complete historical series available for students and educators, who used it as an essential part of their curriculum. In addition to the original six-hour 1987 series Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, which covered the years 1954-1965, SLRC also owns the complete eight-hour video/DVD series Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads (1990), covering the period from 1965-1985.

A customer has been asking about how to find out the value of his old book. What sources should I use?

Everybody has an old book that might be worth a fortune! There are numerous resources both on paper and online to help you help your customer find out.

The condition of the book is important in terms of its market value. The Humanities Department has created a presentation for Determining Book Condition, helpful for both the librarian and the customer.

There are a number of Web sites which combine listings of booksellers for help in determining what items are selling for. Addall Book Price Search and Comparison has a “used books” tab. Fill out the form; use Keyword for publisher and date. The Advanced Book Exchange also has a form to fill out. For the Bookfinder, fill out the advanced option form so you can include more information, such as the date and publisher.

Remember: Prices you find on bookseller Web sites include the dealer’s markup. They will charge the buyer more than they will offer the seller!

There are other, more general Web sites, which are also helpful. Your Old Books lists questions and answers about book collecting, such as “What makes a book rare?” Firsts: The Book Collector’s Magazine has a useful area called “The Fundamentals of Book Collecting.” The Internet Public Library has many other links to follow!

Rare Book organizations are also useful in helping to find information. The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America lists booksellers and appraisers near you. You can also search book titles and find selling prices, and click on the “Learn About Rare Books” tab. The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers is a similar organization for booksellers and appraisers outside of the United States. On the other side of the coin, the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies is a guide to book collecting organizations.