Xanthe Kitchen

Xanthe's assessor was very impressed with the impact she made applying merchandising techniques across different areas of her library - her work on this course was some of the best we have seen. Her success owed a lot to her creativity, determination and resourcefulness, and to the regular attention she gave to the use, impact and appearance of the areas she merchandised.

Throughout her work on the Merchandising Library Shelves course, Xanthe demonstrated a real feel for the impact of displays - how to draw interest to neglected areas of shelving, and how to make the whole library space look more dynamic and interesting to visitors.

01 Reviving neglected shelves

Xanthe used visually stunning book covers to draw interest into parts of the collection that had been quietly overlooked. Rather than treating display as a separate exercise, she used merchandising as a way to lift the appearance and impact of the shelves themselves - giving forgotten stock a chance to find readers.

02 Face-forward as routine practice

A core part of Xanthe's approach was interspersing face-forward titles directly into the normal shelving - small changes, repeated regularly, that noticeably lifted the look of every area she touched. The technique is also self-sustaining: when a face-forward book gets borrowed, it's a moment's work to fill the gap and keep the display fresh.

03 Making the library feel dynamic

Beyond individual displays, Xanthe's understanding of merchandising changed how the wider space felt to visitors. She shared the techniques and her experience with colleagues so that successful approaches were supported and developed across the team - not held by one person, but built into how the library presents itself day to day.