At the Public Library: Blind Date with a Book

I love this idea! To promote reading, some public libraries wrap up novels. The librarians write tantalizing clues about what's inside and stick on barcodes for checkout purposes. Librarian Mollie Kay shares her experience with this marketing ploy:

I picked out teen books that I knew were good, but for some reason or another had been collecting dust. Each book's bar code was scanned and another was made. I then wrapped each book in brown paper, placed the bar code and instruction label on it. Some libraries chose to keep the genre a secret, but I wrote it on the label to ensure a better match-up. [...]

Within an hour of the display going up, more than half of the books were checked out. I hadn't anticipated such an occurrence, so I happily scrambled around for more books to wrap up and display. I now have a stack ready to go, just in case.

Link -via Pleated Jeans | Photo (from a different library): Mosman Library