The goal of this one-month program was to expose our patrons to unfamiliar books and authors. For the month of February, we displayed wrapped books at the entrance of the library with brief labels attached to each one. The labels included the first sentence of the book, facts and who the typical reader would be.
After patrons were done reading the books, they filled out a "rate your date" card that asked whether they enjoyed it. The cards included these ratings: "true love," "just friends" and "never again." The forms were entered into a drawing to win two book prize baskets containing food and books. Blind Date with a Book was so successful that we ran out of covered books and scrambled to add more to the collection.Â
This mystery reading program was so successful that staff members scrambled to wrap more books.Â