Razzle Dazzle – Creating Vibrant Library Spaces

Signage

These ideas have been collated from a workshop session held at the 2010 SLAQ/IASL Conference held in Brisbane, 2010 and a workshop for Library Officers’ Day held in Perth, 2010. The ideas are not exhaustive. Many thanks to the delegates who participated and are responsible for some great ideas.

What message does your library send?

  • Rules, rules, rules!
  • Don’t!
  • Shush!

Libraries should be busy places. They should be spaces that hum with activity. Total silence usually means no one is visiting!

Rules in the library – have a competition at the beginning of each year where classes create the 3 rules for your library. Choose 4 winners – classes have to make these up as a display. Display a new one each term and position behind the loans desk with class name at the bottom.

Make it easy for students to obey the rules.

  • Extra brightly coloured (can be crepe paper), rubbish bins strategically placed.
  • Book trolleys where students can place items when they are finished.
  • Borrowing table (pens, pencils, stapler) near the exit.
  • If you allow food and drink have brightly coloured drink holders (fixed) on each desk.

Creating a ‘look and feel’

  • Have fresh flowers on the return desk.
  • Pot plants – act as see-through space dividers, add greenery. Change these or alternate with flowering plants.
  • Welcome students and staff as they enter the library.
  • Need it now? Borrow it here! – staplers and staples, elastic bands, spare pens and pencils, scrap paper, newspaper, shelving trolleys. Please return for later use – sign.
  • Library bag? Borrow one here!
  • Multilingual signage – may be in the form of a flip board so the language can change each week, but students can still find the sign to suit them.
  • Lounge chairs, TV, Internet access, magazines, aquarium, canary.
  • Wordles – these can change regularly and be about a theme – get the kids to make them as part of a brainstorming exercise about a topic and use as the centre of a display of learning materials – use multiple formats including DVDs, books, charts/posters, magazines, newspaper articles and websites.

Creating a ‘look and feel’

  • Bean bags and floor cushions– colourful and a cheap alternative to expensive lounge furniture – change the covers regularly.
  • Shelves and desks on wheels – to manipulate space easily – introduces flexibility and enables you to create new spaces.
  • Students who assist in the library – should have a badge of recognition. Ask them what they would like to be called.
  • Create zones that invite and include the target audience.
  • Consistency – repetition of ideas, posters and signage in displays.
  • Reading buddies for younger readers – soft toys donated from the community.
  • Suspended net with mobiles that can be changed.
  • Craft projects from library books – display object and book together – art project?
  • Digital displays of student work – these can be digital photo frames.
  • Graffiti whiteboard – clean each week/day
  • Community jigsaw – encourage teachers to come in a put in a few pieces.
  • Community puzzle – might be a large crossword.

Positive/inspirational messages for your students

  • Always model best practice!
  • Have a map that clearly indicates which spaces are set aside for specific purposes.
  • Choose photographs to match with words such as confident, communicate, team member, organise, tidy/neat, persistence. You can buy these, but home grown are also good, like the one below. Better still – make this a design activity for the students – can change every year, frame the photographs using mountings.

A collection of images have been included in a separate document for you to use. Where ever possible acknowledged coyright.

Sayings:

  • ‘Manners will open doors that education doesn’t.’
  • “Do or do not try!” - Yoda, Star Wars
  • ‘Information cannot replace education.’-Earl Kiole
  • ‘It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our
  • abilities.’ - J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  • ‘The important thing is not to stop questioning.’- Albert Einstein.
  • ‘Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.’- Chinese Proverb
  • ‘Technology makes things possible... People make things happen.’ErichBlock
  • ‘Education is not a destination, it's a start.’- Larry Burns, General Motors
  • ‘Education is light, lack of it darkness.’ - Russian proverb
  • ‘Knowledge is Power!’ - Francois Bacon
  • ‘’Words are the voice of the heart.’- Confucius
  • ‘Libraries enable the past to talk to the future.’ - Edward Cornish
  • ‘The internet may be the world's greatest library, but let's face it: all the
  • books are scattered on the floor.’- D.C. Denison
  • ‘Never judge a book by its movie.’ - J. W. Eagan
  • ‘Knowledge, like the sky, isn't private property.’ - Abraham Joshua Herschel

Sayings:

  • ‘We must be the change we wish to see in the world.’- Mahatma Gandhi
  • ‘Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labelled.’- Helen Exley
  • ‘Man is still the most extraordinary computer of them all.’– J.F. Kennedy
  • ‘A library is thought in cold storage.’ Herbert Samuel
  • ‘To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.’- Edmund Burke
  • ‘Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.’- Harriet Martineau
  • ‘Reading is seeing by proxy.’- Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
  • ‘What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it thinks about education.’ - Harold Howe
  • ‘The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.’ -Alvin Toffler
  • ‘BOOKS. The original laptops’
  • ‘In the non-stop tsunami of global information librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim.’Linton Weeks
  • ‘Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.’- Walter Cronkite
  • ‘Ancora Imparo - I am still learning.’ - Michelangelo
  • ‘Read, it's hard to think on an empty brain.’ -Liz Smith

Think tall and you can do anything!

Messages:

  • Ask me/us! (sign at the desk).
  • Our library – where we respect everyone’s right to learn.
  • We appreciate you working quietly (private study room).
  • Please enjoy reading our <graphic novels – or whatever is on display>.
  • Feel free to re-use this paper.
  • The Earth tanks for recycling your paper and plastic.
  • This is an young adult space where students are welcome to eat and drink.
  • Readers are lifelong learners – get the kids to make posters about reading and display.
  • Our Library, our space to share, respect and treasure.
  • Respect yourself – poster next to 150s section.
  • Need help? Ask a friend. Ask @ your library <email address for the library> - this should go on every piece of information, template, FAQ, newssheet, poster that goes out of your library.
  • Your journey begins here.
  • Find something new!
  • Collect, collaborate and communicate.

Messages:

  • Signs for different areas:
  • Play a game
  • Meet and share with a friend
  • Chat area
  • Work with a team
  • Working by myself
  • Please touch – soft toy and puppet display
  • Read me! – new book display
  • Bag drop here.

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