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Fandom Starts Early Storytime Number 1
Fandom Starts Early Storytime Number 2
I've hosted two Fandom Starts Early Geeky Storytimes for kids and I knew it would be the perfect fit for LibraryCon. My previous Fandom storytimes have been OK, but I held them on Friday evenings, which are always a tough time to draw a crowd. Plus, I didn't get the true geeky families I was hoping for and I knew my audience at LibraryCon would appreciate and love a storytime based on fandoms.
I took some things that I've used before and added a few new things for the LibraryCon version. I actually had to adapt and change my plan at the last minute because my crowd ended up being much younger than I anticipated. So here's what we did for Fandom Starts Early LibraryCon!
(flying like superheroes)
Opening Song: Hedwig's Theme-I opened the doors had the kids walk in to Hedwig's Theme and welcomed everyone to Fandom Starts Early Storytime. I told the parents that it's fun to introduce their favorite fandoms to their kids and we have lots of great books to help do so. Plus, being a geek is awesome!
Song: The Freeze by Greg and Steve-I used a picture of Dr. Horrible and his freeze ray and every time he appeared, we had to freeze. You could also use Mr. Freeze for this.
Five superheroes ready to fly
Here comes a villain. Stop that guy!
This superhero can save the day.
Off he/she flies-up, up, and away!
Parachute: We tossed the TARDIS around in the parachute to the Doctor Who theme. (I printed off two photos of the TARDIS and glued some popsicle sticks between them to get it to bounce)
Activities:
I had lots of activities set up around the room for the kids to do.
-Superhero mask making=with masks cut out from the diecut machine and various items to use to decorate
-Match the characters with their item (Han Solo with the Millennium Falcon, Kirk with the Enterprise, Harry with his broom, etc)
-Paint a Dalek-I printed off black and white pictures of a Dalek and let the kids use dot stampers to color the Dalek. Make sure to have wipes on hand!
-Match the Star Trek colors-I put up pictures of the Next Generation cast and sorted them by uniform colors (Red, Yellow, and Blue) and put out blocks to sort under each picture.
-Design your own house crest. I printed off a blank house crest template and let the kids create their own.
-Decorate the Death Star-my amazing teen librarian, Valerie painted over a globe with chalk paint and we now have a death star that can be drawn on with chalk. It's tons of fun and reusable!
I also had lots of comic books to give away to the kids and a big book display for various geeky books.
This was the most successful Fandom Starts Early Storytime because my crowd really appreciated the topic and thought it was lots of fun to get their kids talking about their fandoms. The kids really loved the superhero masks and the parents loved the matching game. I can't wait to do it again next year!
And I'm always looking for geeky storytime books so if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!
This is part of a three part series about the LibraryCon program we hosted at my library. Be sure to check out:
Many cool people who helped make LibraryCon awesome!
(photo credit: E.M. Ervin
So there were many, many things that went wonderfully at LibraryCon and we pulled off an amazingly fantastic event. I'm so proud of all the work that everyone did and what a fun program it turned out to be.
Here's what worked well:
-Involve the local geek community. We reached out to so many organizations, cosplay groups, gaming groups, authors, illustrators, and other area cons to create our booths. In turn, those groups gave us names of others to include. This worked well because it helped us find people who really wanted to be part of this event.
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Provide water! And food if possible. We provided lots (over 100!) bottles of water for the people staffing tables and speaking on panels. They told us over and over again how thankful they were for this and it was such an easy thing to do! We also got a donation for lunch for our panelists and provided snacks for those staffing the booths, which was another nice treat. We also made sure we had staff available to sit at their booths while they took a break to eat.
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Have something for all ages. We had a huge mix of ages from kids to adults and lots of families attend LibraryCon because we really wanted it to be a family friendly event. Our booths all had something fun to offer for all ages and having various Cosplay groups was a huge treat for the kids. We also had a Geeky Storytime, which was a huge hit with kids and parents. We could have added even more kid events and plan to do so for next year.
-Have assigned tables clearly marked for vendors. Also be sure to have lots of extension cords and power strips on hand. We had every table assigned and the list was left with the greeters at the front door. This made set up very easy and run smoothly.
Most of the feedback we had was positive, and the comments about what to change were actually very minor. But no event is absolutely perfect, so here's what I'd change for next year:
-More Signage-We had a whiteboard outside the panel room and had a flier with a schedule of events and room locations. Everything was kept in our main concourse of the library and the rooms are all located right off the concourse, so it was pretty well contained to the front. But people still requested more signage about what was happening where and where rooms were located.
-Bring people into the library. Since most of the event happened in the main concourse, there was very little traffic into the library. This was good (it kept noisy things up front) and bad (people didn't explore the library as much as they could have). We had a scavenger hunt happening in the stacks and not many people knew about it because they didn't make it back to the Children's Department. We also had some kids crafts there as well that got ignored after storytime. I would like to find a way to bring people into the library more and show off lots of library resources and geeky book displays next year. Also, bring over a lot of your Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror/Graphic Novel collections to highlight at your event. We created a last minute geeky kids book display and the books flew off the display!
-Have a booth for the library. This might seem like a no brainer, but we didn't think about it. We thought oh, hey, people are coming to the library so they'll find out about what we offer. But that wasn't the case. Next year, I want to have a booth for library card sign ups and have information about upcoming programs.
-Create a hashtag. Neither Valerie or I are very active on Twitter, so it didn't occur to either of us to create a hashtag for the event until the day of! This is a great way to collect pictures and feedback from attendees on social media and spread the word about your event.
-Make sure you have enough trash cans. Another silly one, but we noticed that by the end of the evening, the trash cans located in the concourse were overflowing! Something else we really hadn't thought about! But for the most part, there wasn't much trash to pick up and the event itself was very clean.
-Offer even more things to do! We only hosted three panels because this was our first LibraryCon. We spread them out throughout the afternoon because we were trying to think of when people would arrive, want to take breaks, eat, etc. As my husband pointed out to me, "people will eat when they want to eat-you just have events and let them figure it out." Next year, I think we don't have to worry about spacing things out and having breaks, but instead offer more panels, fandom meetups, and gaming demos.
Overall we had a fantastic event it was lots of fun. You don't need to have a huge budget to put on an amazing event. Our entire LibraryCon was put together on about $80, and most of that could have even been taken out and not really needed. Include your community and you will get a great response. I can't wait to do it all again-bigger and better-next year!
Since LibraryCon was such a huge event, I've split these posts up into three parts. Find Part One-Planning here and stay tuned for Part Three-What I'd Do Differently!
And check out Valerie's post about LibraryCon!
After lots of meetings, prep, and planning, LibraryCon was finally here!
(photo credit: Valerie)
On Friday, we set up the concourse and meeting rooms with our tables and labeled everything so everyone could find where they were assigned. I also set up for my Fandom Starts Early Geeky Storytime.
We started LibraryCon with a Friday night screening of a local webseries,
Drifter. They screened some episodes from Season 1 and then hosted a Q and A with some of the cast and creative team. We had a small but very interested turnout (we had around 30 people attend for this event). We weren't sure if it was the timing, the day, or having two days worth of events, but the people that came loved it. Valerie and I didn't know if we would have a small or big crowd the next day, but we went home excited for our main day of LibraryCon.
It was finally Saturday, the day of LibraryCon!
Our guests and "vendors" started arriving around 9:30 to start setting up. The first event of the day was Fandom Starts Early Geeky Storytime at 11:15. I had done this storytime twice before, but had always had a small crowd and not the geeky families I really wanted to draw in. This was the perfect opportunity to have those fandoms come together in a storytime and I had a great crowd of kids who loved making the TARDIS fly in a parachute, fly like superheroes, and read about Star Wars and Star Trek. We even got told by one of the parents that this storytime was "groovy!" Yay!
After storytime, it was time to start the main event. We had all of the guests and vendors set up and people could visit with each table. We had three panels throughout the day and honestly, we could have had even more. We put in a lot of time between each panel and we could have filled that time easily with other events. We had a Cosplay Panel, Author Panel, and Illustrator Panel.
(photo credit: Valerie)
The highest attendance was for the Cosplay panel. I'm not sure if it was the theme, the fact that it was the first one, or a combination of those things. We still had a good turnout for the other panels, but I think if we had spaced them together more, we would have had more people.
The crowd had lots of great questions at each panel and were very excited to have a chance to hear from each group. In between panels, con-goers visited with the various booths and each table got a lot of traffic and promotion. Our authors and illustrators commented several times about how great the event was and how they got to have a chance to talk to the people who came by.
People started arriving for the event around 11, just before the storytime started and LibraryCon really started to pick up around noon. Throughout the day we had 400 people attend our event. Most of the time was spent visiting with each table, talking to the people at the booths, and the teens spent a lot of time talking to the authors and illustrators and buying books and drawings! I saw many teens (and adults) leaving the event with bags full of great swag. In addition to the authors and illustrators selling items and many of the booths hosting giveaways or offering something special, we had a library prize board. We put together multiple prize packs and had a large whiteboard with photos of each prize pack, what was included, and a target age range for the prize pack up front at the greeter table. Guests could enter to win one of the prize packs and we called the winners the following week.
We had lots of water for all of our panelists and everyone staffing a table, which was greatly appreciated by all. We also had some food donated (thanks Chipotle!) for our special guests. We had staff scheduled as greeters, room attendants and floaters, so there was always library staff available to answer questions, welcome people to the event, and take care of room needs during the panels.
(photo credit: Valerie)
We had staff at the door throughout the event to pass out fliers which served as our schedule of events. It got pretty easy to spot who was coming for LibraryCon as the day went on-you could tell who was in costume and who wasn't. We did have several people who said they didn't know LibraryCon was happening that day but they were so excited they had come to the library and found out about all these great area organizations. There were still many confused faces from patrons as well who came into the library thinking it was a typical Saturday and discovered Storm Troopers, Deadpool, Ghostbusters, and Captain Jack Sparrow wandering around. Someone even came by and asked "what's the point of all this?" which gave us a wonderful opportunity to explain that the library is a community space and we had organized an event to promote and bring together the fan and pop culture communities in our area.
The best thing about our event was that many of the groups and guests knew each other from the area or other events. There was such a positive camaraderie between all the vendors throughout the day and that really carried over to everyone who attended. Even the people staffing the tables kept visiting other booths and tables and talking to each other and hanging out, so it was fun to see the geeky community really come together.
The final event of the evening was our documentary showing of
The Midwest in Panels. We kicked off the event with a Q and A featuring the owner of our local comic book store. Then we watched the documentary with a small but dedicated crowd who stuck it out for the entire day. While the documentary was showing, our vendors closed up and Valerie and I did a lot of clean up. We ended the event at 8:30 that evening and had about thirty minutes to clean up, put away last minute things, wrap things up before the library closed. It was a long day but it was totally worth it!
Two tired librarians after a long day of LibraryCon!
(photo credit: Valerie)
