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Cindy: This morning when I saw this video it had 310 views. I emailed Lynn to ask if she’d seen it and said we need to blog this but we were both busy today. This evening as I write this, the video has over 74,000 views and will be climbing. But you can’t miss this, [...]

Cindy: With two libraries to manage, I don’t have as much time as I used to for displays and bulletin boards and yet have twice as many to design! My favorites are ones that use student participation in some manner, both because it generates ownership and interest for them and because it saves ME time! This current [...]

Cindy: My smiley face bulletin board with yellow books on display was so popular with our students, that I may just work my way through the rainbow…but in the meantime, I’m celebrating the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day holiday and spring with GREEN book covers. The nice part about a color-themed display is that it allows for [...]

Cindy: So many of our middle school students walk in the library and ask this question: “Do you have any good books?” My flip comment to them is always, “No, we only buy bad books for the library…” and then I wait for them to laugh, but many of them just look disappointed and start to walk [...]

Cindy and Lynn: Santa left two big packages* for our middle school readers…we hope he was good to you this year, too. We are looking forward to 2011 and all of the good books on the horizon… * our glass display cases, wrapped up for the holidays. One of our students’ favorite displays. They ask [...]

Cindy: Sometimes the best bulletin boards are the simple ones. It’s easy to make displays busy and cluttered and that can overwhelm your patrons who are quickly passing them. Here’s one that has been popular with our middle school students and staff. Yellow paper with a hand drawn smiley face brightens up the room, makes [...]

Cindy: We all have those readers who enjoy books that are guaranteed to make them cry. When I served on BBYA, one of the members called hers “the crying girls.” I enjoy a good weepy book myself, so every few years we put our Sob-O-Meter on display and ask our teens to determine the level [...]

Cindy: I have an awesome “shop mama,” an extraordinary female Manufacturing Technology teacher at one of my middle schools who works hard to be sure students leave her class with the skills they will need in their personal lives or in advanced classes at the high school. Coinciding with the launch of Bookends on the [...]