Creating and Promoting Lifelong Learning in Public Libraries by Gilton Donna L.;

Author:Gilton, Donna L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Displays and Exhibits

Displays and exhibits encourage patrons to explore many subjects related to information literacy in various ways. These may be traditional face-to-face exhibits, online exhibits, or both. Subjects include library orientations, elaboration on a book or theme, and more complex subjects. Orientations include library tours with pictures and floor plans, an exhibit on library departments and what they do (handbook information), basic steps to research, how classification systems work, such as using the caveman theory or Fred Flintstone’s ten questions to explain Dewey Decimal Classification or search results showing how search databases in different fields treat the same general topic, such as capital punishment. Elaboration on a book or a theme may include promoting RA services showing related fiction and nonfiction, using a book from a local one book, one community program and explaining aspects of the book in displays, or doing the same thing with a play or musical playing in your area, such as The Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables. Those exhibits may also be multimedia.

More complex exhibits can include promoting critical thinking, criticizing classification systems, or comparing taxonomies to folksonomies and stating pros and cons of both. In some cases, students may create exhibits. Students at the Ontario College of Art and Design created “Choose Your Own Research,” an alternative reality game or a scavenger hunt with live characters to explore gender and sexuality issues and a three-dimensional library map to trace student research.[200]

General approaches to planning exhibits include creating a lesson plan or storyboard, brainstorming or concept mapping, and consulting the LIS and museum literature. Lesson plans may be written to help librarians to determine goals for the exhibit, as well as to determine the content. A storyboard further shows what the different parts of the exhibit will look like. Brainstorming and concept mapping are important, especially when planning exhibits looking at different aspects of a book, other media, or a subject. This is helpful both in determining aspects of a subject and how they relate to each other and in executing the exhibit itself. The exhibit may also be in more than one location with one aspect of the subject in each location. This may be within one library or within branches of a library system.

Librarians are urged to consult LIS books and articles on planning and executing exhibits. Investigating museum information on this topic is also useful, as well as information about how museum personnel “interpret” or teach about their exhibits.

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