A Few Ways To Promote New eBooks, Databases, and Books In Your Library From The October eMackin

Every month I write an article for Connext, The MackinVIA Community.  

This month for Shannon Shares,  I wrote A Few Ways To Promote New eBooks, Databases, and Books In Your Library.  It was hard to narrow it down to three digital tools to share, but this is just a start....there will be more to come throughout the year in MackinVIA Connext and Shannon Shares. 

We are always looking for ways to get our students hooked on something new to read.

When teachers come to the library looking for that perfect read aloud, we want to be able to point them to great new reads and authors too.

We are lucky because there are so many awesome digital tools that make it easy and exciting to create book promotions that will catch the eye of everyone in the school community.

The first digital tool is one that I just found a couple of weeks ago. It creates catalog cards and was created by librarian John Blyberg. It is so simple to use and very easy to save the cards that you create.

It will be fun to create catalog cards to post on the shelves by new books. Also, how about creating catalog cards to place around computers and iPads where students are looking at databases and eBooks to help promote them.

Have you heard of Edu.Buncee?

If you haven’t, you must check it out!  As the site states, “Buncee is a web-based creation tool where you incorporate multimedia into a shareable digital canvas.”

It was so much fun creating the one above…and didn’t take long at all.

In Edu.Buncee, you can choose backgrounds, stickers, messages, quotes, images, and more to add to the canvas.  Audio and video can also be embedded, along with interactive elements to make your Buncee come to life for all of your readers.

I created this one to show eBooks in MackinVIA;  PebbleGo, our favorite database from Capstone; and a classic read aloud from the library collection. Each of these images is then linked to that place online.

Buncee’s are very simple to share through different social networks, email, and you can embed them into a blog or even on the front of your library website.

Creating an Instagram for your library or classroom is another terrific way to promote new books in the library and other happenings throughout the year.

Once you set up the Instagram, share it with your students, teachers, parents, and school community.  Throughout the week, take a quick picture of eBooks or books on the library shelves with a short hook to get your patrons into the library. You can share Instagrams through different social networks like Twitter and Facebook so everyone can see them.

These are just three ways to promote all of the wonderful things within the library collection.  As we go through the year, I will share more ideas and would love to hear your ideas too!