The college’s Student Leaders group has a sub-group for the library, allowing interested students to be more involved in promoting library activities. A brainstorming session resulted in several great ideas, including one for a ‘blind date with a book’.

The concept is simple: wrap a random selection of books in paper and write a few descriptors down so students can pick a book that they might not otherwise have read or even noticed.

I worked with one of these students on this project in Term 1, and we set it up to start in Term 2. We started with 25 books chosen from the Fiction section, wrote their barcode number and some words taken from the blurbs  (or from the general gist) on little cards, then wrapped them up in brown paper.

With the help of one of our Teacher Librarians, I set up the display as pictured while the student worked on designing the posters. She used a site called Canva.com, which I’d never heard of but it makes very polished-looking posters. We decorated the display with elements of mystery and romance, but decided to downplay the ‘blind date’ aspect and enhance the ‘mystery’, ‘dare’ angle to better entice students who might be put off by ‘romance’.

‘Mystery Books’ proved an instant hit! Within 2 days the Teacher Librarians had to wrap more books as the display was getting a little thin, and she included some non-fiction as well. It was a very fun thing to put together, student-led and I learned about Canva.com which I’m keen to use again!