Since the Youth Media Awards are fresh on everyone’s mind, I thought we could talk more about the award winning books. My topic today is what do you do with the award winners?
That’s kind of an open-ended question, so let me narrow it down a bit. Several years back when I began working at my library, staff told me that after the announcement of award winners and honor winners I was to pull these books so staff could update the records and place award stickers on the books. We had stickers for the Caldecott and the Newbery award winners and honor books. But, we didn’t put stickers on any other award winning books.
When I went back to school for my library degree I remember learning about all the different ALA categories that books could win awards for—audiobooks, non-fiction books, Coretta Scott King Award books and more. As the years have progressed the Youth Media Awards have encompassed more and more diverse and inclusive book awards and I am super glad about that.
But….and here is my question, what do libraries do to draw attention to these books? Do we put stickers on them and place them on display? Or highlight them somehow? Obviously, if the books won awards they deserve recognition and usage. As librarians we should be recommending these titles to our patrons and highlighting their finer points too.
This year as I eagerly awaited the announcement of the winners, I thought about what that meant for these books in my library. As time has gone on, my library has opted to only put stickers on the spines of the Caldecott and Newbery winners. No longer do we denote honor books for these awards and we don’t include any other annual awards either. How am I to get my co-workers and patrons excited about these books if I don’t have a way of drawing attention to them?
In recent years, I started compiling a list of the winners on a single page handout that I display along with the award winning titles. This list and the display features books from ALL the categories of winners, not just the Caldecott and Newbery. I have nothing against the Caldecott and Newbery awards, but there are so many other award winning books that seem to get lost in the shuffle of the two “biggies”. What can we do to make sure our patrons are noticing these other award winners?
So, what do you do with your award winning books? Stickers? Displays? Lists? I’d love to hear what you have found that works for your library.
2 comments:
We love it when we already own some of the books, but also love it when we can purchase them AFTER they are plastered with stickers by the publisher! We have a "genre sticker" for the Caldecott winner and honors, as well as the Newbery winner. Those can go on the spines. We also change the call number for the Newbery winners, honors, and Printz winners and honors. This year, for the first time, we are purchasing the official seals for most of the categories. We are a very small library in a city of 1,500 people, and are going to offer them to all the libraries in our system so they can purchase any they like for 60 cents each. We'll see how that goes! We have purchased some winners that aren't here yet, and already featured the winners and honors (all categories) that we already owned on Facebook, with photos. Wina Mortenson, Galesville Public Library
Wina--that is a great way to draw attention to the award winning books! I love it! Offering them for purchase for small amounts is clever too. Way to go!
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