QR Codes and Enticing Readers

Last week I decided to finally give QR codes a try. I have been seeing librarians talk about book trailers on list servs for quite awhile now, and figured it was time to investigate how to use QR codes to link books to their book trailers.

The first step was locating book trailers to use. I found that many publishers have set up their own channels on YouTube with trailers, interviews and more linked there. I decided to add as many as I could, so I searched through the publishers' channels to locate interviews and trailers for as many books as I had.

It was easy to create the codes on QR Stuff . All I had to do was copy the URL for the video into the generator and download the finished product. The process was:

1. Find video on YouTube
2. Copy url address into QR Stuff generator
3. Download QR code as an image
4. Rename and save download to "Book Trailers" folder on desktop
5. Insert QR code image onto Word Document 
6. Print full page

I set up a 3 column Word document to print out the labels and added a title for each ("Raven Boys Book Trailer" or "Libba Bray Author Interview") so that I could tell the codes apart. I left the title with the code when I placed them on the books since the first may be an interview and then add a trailer later. It was easy to copy and paste as many codes as I needed for titles with multiple copies. I used yellow paper to try to get them to stand out more against the cover. Luckily, I picked a day when I wasn't interrupted too much because it is easy to mix them up if you don't do it in a set pattern of creation and labeling. I did a quick scan of each code with my phone to double check that the right videos were linked.

As for the display, I went as simply as I could. I just wanted to draw attention to the new features and see how the students reacted. I use my iPhone to take quick pictures of the newly coded covers, emailed them to myself and printed them out to add to the bulletin board.

Several of the titles have been checked out, but I'm not sure yet if it is the popularity of the series or the new codes had something to do with it. Time will tell, but for now it is a fun and easy way to draw the attention of my readers. I'm also hoping that some teachers who do independent reading projects might consider book trailers as an alternative assignment.