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decaf Jess

Whether your library building is closed due to a pandemic, remodeling, or you're just looking to beef up your online presence, creating virtual book displays on Google Sites is an easy, free, and quick way to showcase your collection to patrons and help recreate that browsing feeling from far away.

Google Sites is very intuitive and works well with copy and paste. 




We're going to create a simple virtual book display about dogs.


1. Visit sites.google.com. You need to be logged into Google. If you have a Gmail account, that's all you need. If not, you can make one pretty quickly. 

2. In another window, open up your library's card catalog site/OPAC. 



3. Choose "Blank." 


You will notice on the right an option for "Theme."  You can tinker with this to your heart's desire. Some themes will let you change the photo background of your header, or upload your own.


4. Let's add our first book. Go to your library's OPAC and search for books about dogs. 

If your OPAC shows book covers, you can right click on the book cover and select "Copy." Then, go to the window of your new Google Site, click on the middle of the page somewhere, right click, and select "Paste." (You can also use the keyboard by Control + C to copy and Control + V to paste.)

If your OPAC does NOT show book covers, you'll need to do some digging. I'd recommend going to Amazon or Google Image search and looking for the book cover there. Then, right click on the book cover and select "copy", and go to the window of your new Google Site, click on the middle of the page somewhere, right click, and select "Paste." (You can also use the keyboard by Control + C to copy and Control + V to paste.)

5. You can now tinker with the size of your photo. Notice how Google Sites uses gridlines to help you keep things orderly? How nice of them.

6. Next, let's add the book title. If your OPAC is like mine, the title of the book is probably also a link to the catalog page. If so, highlight the book title, right click and select "Copy" (or hit Control and C on the keyboard). Now go to your Google Sites page, and right click and select "Paste" (or hit Control and V on the keyboard.) You should now see the book title, and it should be a link!

If your OPAC does not have it linked, you can go to your Google Site, select "Insert" and "Text box", and type in the title. Then, go to your OPAC, copy the link to that dog book's catalog page, and then go back to Google Sites. When you highlight book title, you should see a few things popup. Click on the link button (pictured below) and copy/paste the catalog link there. 


You've added your first book to your display!

As you tinker with Google Sites, you'll get more and more comfortable with it. Explore a bit! You can add more text boxes and separate your book display by age or reading level. You can add more links to other things, or even YouTube videos. 


7. Publishing your site when you're done creating it: First, you will need to make sure your sharing settings will allow people to view it. Click on the sharing button. (Shown below.)



Under "Links," make sure "Published site" is viewable to "public."

Next, click the "Publish" button on the upper right side.

Success!

More Ideas

If an item you are displaying is available in more than one format, consider adding links to patrons can order it in additional formats. (Large type, CD audio, Playaway, etc.) Don't forget about your ebook holdings -- if you subscribe to OverDrive, Kanopy, etc., include those links as well.

You can make a page that changes over time. We use a New York Times Bestseller page to showcase links to bestselling books in our catalog. You can also create a "Staff Picks" page. Any time you make changes, just click the "Publish" button again to update it.

As you get more comfortable, tinker around with the "Pages" option to add more pages to your Google Site. 

Sample Virtual Book Displays

Here are a few examples of book displays from my library: (Note: My library is not affiliated with and does not sponsor this blog, but I am using it as an example here!)

New York Times Bestsellers: https://sites.google.com/sschlibrary.org/nytbestsellers/home
Staff Recommendations: https://sites.google.com/sschlibrary.org/decemberstaffpicks/home

Good luck!


When you cannot safely interact in person with your patrons, how do you stay relevant? 

I am the head of youth services at my small suburban library, which has been closed to the public since the middle of March. I’ll leave the issue of whether or not to reopen in the hands of public health professionals and instead focus on what we can do in the time we are closed. 

Around May 2020 when it became apparent that we were in this for the long haul, I began experimenting with online programming. Videos would get a few dozen views, which slowly trickled to less than ten. Our adult programmer has been posting recipe and craft videos, some of which get 500 views, and some of which get less than five. We are seemingly at the capricious whims of Facebook algorithms. 

Let’s be honest: our patrons are burnt out on the internet, especially parents whose kids are e-learning, and it costs a lot of staff time and energy to film and edit these videos, not to mention the hassle of navigating copyright concerns of storytime. Can we acknowledge that there is already a vast pool of educational children’s videos and readalouds available at a higher quality than I can make with my inexpensive setup? Can I acknowledge that I have been going through the motions, doing what I think I should be doing, even though it is clearly not what our patrons want? Can I confess that these Sisyphean tasks are mainly to try and prove my relevance to my boss and peers, even though it’s clearly not vibing with my community?

I am officially calling it: I am giving up trying to do regular online children’s and teen’s programming for the time being, because it is failing and I’m tired of getting to the end of the month and counting my stats on one hand.

So, we try something else. 

Some things have been working: mainly, the online book & movie displays I’ve been making on Google sites and linking to on our website and social media, like this one on horror movies I posted in October. People have been ordering these books and they have been getting clicks.

Also, the Facebook album of our new releases has been driving new release circulation. 

Interlibrary cooperation has been working. Our library and a few others nearby have gotten together the last few years to offer a once-monthly STEAM activity for area homeschool families, with each library taking a month in the school year to host them. This year, since most of our families are sort of homeschooling with e-learning, we’re posting these activities online on a shared Google site and promoting it to all families. We’re only on our second month but people seem interested. This cooperation conserves staff time, reduces burnout as each library only has to focus on one great program instead of several, and promotes networking and sharing among libraries. I’m interested in seeing what other kinds of shared programming we can do.
 
I tried doing craft and book giveaways in the late spring but no one was interested, possibly because we were still very worried at that time about the spread of COVID from touching items. Now that we know that is much lower risk than originally thought, I may try it again. Who knows, I may even start making some videos again in a month or two. I’ve already made a November Story Room, so I’ll monitor those stats this month, but we may take a break from that in December. Maybe I’ll see if I can get my husband to help me with some filmed storytimes to see if the addition of a new face changes things. Who knows what I’ll do. 

In sum, let’s be brave enough to admit we’re failing, fail quickly, and try something else. Repeat as necessary.
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