Merchandising means displaying products so that they stimulate interest and entice customers to make a purchase. Libraries have nothing to sell other than ‘a good read’ but we can adapt retail techniques to boost performance and to help readers make fresh discoveries. This course will teach you how to make the shelves look rich and tempting at all times.

What do you say when someone asks you for a good read? A practical course to get you more comfortable with starting book conversations and more confident in making reading suggestions. You don’t have to be a big reader yourself, or have lots of book knowledge; it’s all about learning to listen and using your patrons as a creative resource.

Understanding what readers need and how they choose is the basis for a fresh approach to connecting with your patrons. Use these new ideas alongside your traditional RA to reach a wider range of patrons. Full of beautifully designed free downloads to support RA in the library and on social media, this course will give you a new enthusiasm for your job.

This course will give library displays some new bite! You will develop skills in targeting audiences and understanding reader motivations to support successful displays which engage more deeply than the standard seasonal themes. Working across collection areas and age groups, you will explore how to use display to find readers for less well-known books in your collection to take the pressure off those wait lists.

Learn to see through your patrons' eyes! This course develops skills in analyzing the library’s most important spaces then taking practical steps to improve the customer experience. You will plan and build simple routines to sustain high standards and control the library environment.

To improve the library experience for your patrons, you need objective evidence about how people are using your space and resources. Observing and recording anonymous patron behaviors is a powerful way to gather this. This course will introduce the basic methods with easy exercises to build your experience and the opportunity to design your own observation too. Use these techniques to get beyond a familiar workspace and staff assumptions to what your patrons actually see and do.

Explore a wide range of ideas to broaden the reach and appeal of your library to your reading community. You will experiment with ways to enrich reading lives, connect readers together and target diverse needs and preferences to reach a wide range of people. Starting from the reader will bring a new energy to your strategy and the practical coursework tasks will enable you to experience this powerful dynamic.

The development of this course was sponsored by crime writer Ann Cleeves, who is passionate about the power of reading for pleasure to support our wellbeing. It is designed to help library staff who want to take on the role of directly engaging with individual readers and groups facing life’s challenges. It will give you the confidence to talk positively with people about their reading lives, including those who don’t read books and those who haven’t read in a long time.