Regency Week(end)

In my Time Flies post I mentioned two things that I needed to catch you all up on: Sewing for Advertising and Regency Week(end). Today I am finally able to discuss both!

A little over a month ago I was cornered by the vending machine at work. This is roughly the conversation that ensued:

Awesome person: "Hi, Jessica! I don't think you know me...."

Me: ".... I think I do... maybe. Aren't you [insert Awesome Person's real name here]?" (said while discreetly double checking work badge)

Awesome person: "Yes! Okay, so you're the person who likes to dress up, right?"

Me: "Yes I am!"

And so the conversation progressed. In the end I discovered that there was going to be a big Jane Austen event at our local historical home, the Francis Land House (learn more about the house here). In an effort to strengthen the budding relationship between the libraries and Historical Houses organization we would kick off the event Friday night with a showing of Becoming Jane. Then Saturday would be a regency fair at the Francis Land House. My part in the whole thing would be to drum up interest through advertising. Normally advertising means fliers and talking up programs. This time it meant costumes! My duty was to dress in regency garb for several days prior to the event to get people talking! Also somehow during the ensuing conversation between Awesome Persona and my manager, I wound up not only assisting at the Friday night showing, but also volunteering at the Saturday event. Who knew!?

Flier put out by Historical Houses

And so the sewing began. And after several weeks, lots of angst, and some bruised fingers, I officially hate sewing. Not really... but it will be a while before I look at my sewing machine with less than a feeling of disdain.

And here are the results!

Striking a pose next to our mini Austen display

My grandma sent me some extra fancy bits (the fan and hat, for instance)

At the Friday night movie. You have to dress up for the theater, right?

Casual day wear for the Saturday event

Friday:

The movie Friday night was an after hours event... which means that the library was closed for an hour or two before we opened the doors to the auditorium. Honestly, those events are a hard sell. Its hard to get people excited to come back to the library after they've already left for the day. But we did get about 10 people total, and that is pretty sweet! We had one of the Historical Houses people there to give more information about the Saturday event and to show off some of the fun things that would be available.

The movie itself was alright. A lot of people were insisting that it was an accurate depiction of Jane Austen's romantic life... which bugs me a little. I'd like to think it was less high school high-drama than that. Plus, at the end they elude to her being a famous author while she was alive and--from what I understood--that is false. She was published anonymously until after her death, so she wouldn't have had fans talking to her about how amazing her books were. But I suppose it made for good cinema.

I would have liked to have a discussion after the event. We had a few people ask about that before and a couple people afterwards were questioning me about things in the film. I think it might have been nice to get the conversation going between the film's attendees instead.

Saturday:

The event Saturday was lots of fun. Admission was $2 and included the house tour (which is normally $5 on its own). I helped mostly with the craft table (where we had quilling, paper dolls, and sweet bags). I also spent some time inside doing readings for visitors, which most people seemed uncomfortable with, but it was the entertainment of the day in regency times. I did have a few people who were into it though. One even took the book and read to me! Very fun. I also poked around the games table and played some cup and ball, badminton (or a variation of it), and hoops. There were also stations about the fashions of the day, the language of the fan, and even a glass armonica! All very cool.

The crafts tale and my craft table buddy

The games station and authentic regency Hall's Auto in the background

Inside the house with these fine ladies

Regency clothing. She made her whole outfit. Lovely!

The glass armonica waiting to be played!

I ad to leave early, but there was also a guest speaker that evening on hierarchy and seduction in regency fashions. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

The weirdest thing I found in all of this is that if you wear a costume for a week people will default duties to you. "Well you should talk to them because you're dressed up all fancy." I also found that people were hesitant to actually ask about the. I would get comments about being a Disney princess or going to a wedding, but very few people directly asked about the outfits. So I had to be ready to introduce the topic from a variety of angles.

And that is what I learned about sewing for advertising as well as information on regency week(end). I hope you enjoyed!

Merh!

"Merh," is the sound I make when I'm displeased with something that is officially out of my control; for instance:

I took most of this week off to spend a little time with my hubby. I figured we'd have plenty of down time and I'd be able to relax after the past month of craziness and catch up on some blogging. So in preparation for such an endeavor, I left some of the images I need for blogging at work. *deadpan* Yup. Because I'm awesome like that.

Merh!

 I will, however, persevere and venture to post for you what I can. I already owe you all about 5 belated posts.

Spotlight Displays

It's about time I got back to you all. So today I thought I'd talk about displays! Mostly because all the pictures are already set for this one. Basically... I'm being lazy. Let's get started!

Every library has displays. I've done a few in my time... although many of them I don't have pictures of anymore. (I used to be very bad at documentation.) But here are a few for reference:

This is from another branch I worked at two years ago, roughly

The front and back of my 3D shark display from early last year

Not strictly a display, but taking up display space

Using myself as a display! More on this later

I'm very sad about some of my missing displays. I did an interactive paper crane display about four years ago for the Intentional Day of Peace. We had a replica of the Children's Peace Memorial in Japan and patrons made paper cranes for us to send to the monument (which I still haven't sent; some of the string broke and it's hard to find space to thread 1,000 paper cranes). Perhaps I'll revisit that display again this year. But I digress.

So we have two display spaces at my library location that are hurting. Most displays are on a rotation list and are taken care of by people throughout the year. Not these. Sadly, these are also the two near the teen section of the library, so shouldn't it be even more captivating not less?

Anyhow, our teen services librarian has come up with some passive program ideas and that's helped us fill up some of the space.

Before and after shots of April's passive program display

So that's filling out pretty well. We even had a decent number of people interested in creating some blackout poetry! (Happy--late--National Poetry Month by the way.)

The other display that's been hurting is just around the corner. It's a small, plain, black shelving unit that was supposed to be a graphic novel spotlight; partially because we have the only anime club in the system and partially because we had an overabundance of graphic noels. Unfortunately, we moved to a floating collection and our graphic novels all left! Now it's very difficult to fill up three shelves with related spotlight titles. Additionally, the space started to become a catch-all for fliers, bookmarks, handouts, etc. Which is great... but it was looking cluttered and sad; so Susan and I took charge of the situation.

Now the display is two fold. The first part is a program highlight display where we promote upcoming teen/teen interest programs for the month. We include titles related to the featured program as well as fliers and bookmarks (in addition to whatever other fliers and bookmarks need to be displayed for the month). The second part of the display is the original graphic novel spotlight. The only change to that is that the spotlight now ties into the program highlight as well. Easy peasy!

We've only just started this idea, but I'm happy with the results so far:

CSI program highlight featuring Case Closed

Jedi Training Day (now a May the 4th display)

I'm excited to see where this goes! This month is going to be tricky ... I have a tattoo program. Good thing more and more teen books feature tattoos! I wonder what graphic novels do... hmmm....