READ Mini Posters

I vaguely remember that the public library I went to as a kid had posters promoting reading featuring the likes of Bill Cosby and the Muppets. I haven't visited a children's section in quite a few years since, intentions aside, I can understand how a lone man browsing the picture books could be perceived as creepy. It was news to me, then, that the ALA has continued this poster series all these years, featuring such current child- and teen- appealing celebrates as Keira Knightly, Stephen Hawking, Missy Elliott and Daniel Radcliffe (I was pleased, but puzzled, to see that William H. Macy had enough name recognition to make the cut). The celebrates pose with a children's book, ostensibly a favorite title, and the ALA sells the posters through its website for $16.

Librarian in Black, as well as several other library blogs I've seen, plugged the latest offering in the series, a Make-Your-Own ALA Read Mini-Poster. I had a hard time finding it because the recent redesign of the ALA website killed off all the links I'd seen, but eventually found the poster generator. Here I am posing with some of my own favorite childhood reading, the gothic mysteries of John Bellairs, illustrated by Edward Gorey.

The positioning tools could be improved upon, but it's clear that the person who created the poster generator has a sense of how people actually use the Internet. I can save the poster, email it to friends, post it to Facebook, and provide the link so my friends can do the same. I'm not sure whether it's actually reaching its target audience of young people (as opposed to just hipster librarians) and I think ALA would do well to feature it more prominently on its website. Still, it seems like it could be a successful example of how to increase interaction with library tools and website.