Try attaching a "shelf talker" card or sign to your fiction shelves — it might lead to happier readers, and increased circulation of your fiction collection.

Someone browsing your library's fiction shelves might be hesitant to choose a title if they aren't sure if it's the first in a series or not. Others may be pleasantly surprised to discover a prequel or sequel that's been published, especially if it's been years since they "finished" the series.

And you might want to add at the bottom of your shelf talker... something like "Read them all? You might like the series by [insert author of a similar series here] too!"

Here are tools you can use to make your list in reading order:

• What's Next™: Books in Series Database of Kent District Library
• Juvenile Series and Sequels from Mid-Continent Public Library (Independence, MO)
• Novelist database, provided by BadgerLink and available through your library's Research page in the Literature category
• Novelist K-8 database (like NoveList, but includes books for elementary and middle school aged children), also provided by BadgerLink and available through your library's Research page in the Literature category

To see how easy it is to create one, here's an example I found over at the Facebook page for Lester Public Library (Two Rivers, WI):

Credits:
• the photo "48/365: And Who Said I Didn't Read?" on Flickr by Kaleb Fulgham is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Creative Commons license
• the photo of a John Sandford shelf talker is from the Facebook page for Lester Public Library (Two Rivers, WI)