March Madness Programs!

While discussing DIY and passive/stealth programs, students shared some of the ways they hook into basketball frenzy during March!

• To coincide with the NCAA's March Madness,  both Youth Services (YS) and Adult Services (AS) are having "Sweet 16" brackets.  In YS, we have chosen 16 books to go head-to-head to play for the "March Madness of Books" title.  I made a bracket using 2" x 15" strips of construction paper and taping them to the big wall.  It is now up, sans the books - too early for them - and is 8.5' tall and 12' wide.
• I downloaded the covers of the books the YS staff chose (there's eight of us, so I had each person choose two titles).  I printed them out, trimmed them, and mounted them on 8" x 10" pieces of yellow construction paper. Patrons and staff will vote each week for the winner of each game.  After 4 weeks, we'll have our champ.
• We're doing a Junior Fiction Tournament of Books, as well.  We use the 16 most popular JFic books checked out over the past year according to our ILS and let kids vote on them over the month either at the library or online.  Ours is bracketed out on our wall with painter's tape and photocopies of the covers.  I think it'll be really interesting to find out what book wins.
• We do a March Madness book program as well. During February, kids nominate titles to compete. Then we select from nominations which ones will actually compete (and add a few of our own) and have kids vote each week. The best thing about it is how many kids will request and read titles off of the brackets. This program is very easy to run - just be prepared with read-alikes for each title.  We didn't give any prizes or collect any predictions - just votes at each stage. And kids could choose to just vote on a single contest - which they often did. The fact that there was no prize meant that we could roll with however a kid approached it. Our community can get very PRIZE FOCUSED. This was a nice change. 
• I'm doing a March Madness Teen Books tournaments. It is super easy. We started planning it in the beginning of February and started mid-February. My two month old Teen Advisory Board helped select the initial 32 titles. The tournament runs 6 weeks with 5 rounds and Round 2 starts tomorrow. Each round we narrow the field down until we have one champ. We use the lingo (Sweet 16, Elite 8...) Teen books are huge with adults too so I opened the tournament up to everyone. I'm just giving out a $25 Amazon gift card at the end of tournament.