I was chatting the other say with Leslie, our library assistant, when she brought up an interesting observation: snake books aren’t getting checked out as much as in the past. The only difference she noticed is that, due to weeding in nonfiction, sections have shifted around. Snakes, which used to be at the top of the shelf, have moved to the bottom.

So I ran the numbers, and confirmed that circulations in that section are indeed down – by over 50%.

We talked about the cereal aisle at the supermarket, and how the prime real estate is at a child’s eye level, because kids have a big say in cereal buying. That’s the place to get noticed, and notice leads to purchase.

Is the same true for books? Have you had a similar experience to my Snake section example?