The John Cotton Dana Award is called “the most prestigious award of the American Library Association.” Here’s a little more about it:

“The John Cotton Dana Award, provided in conjunction with the H.W. Wilson Foundation, the American Library Association and EBSCO Publishing, honors outstanding library public relations, whether a summer reading program, a year-long centennial celebration, fundraising for a new college library, an awareness campaign or an innovative partnership in the community.”

LPL received the award for our Banned Books Trading Card project, which we summarized for the judges:

“With seven collectible trading cards featuring art inspired by banned books and created by local artists, Lawrence Public Library’s Banned Books Trading Card project sought to raise awareness of Banned Books Week in a unique way, engage the local arts community, and bring wider exposure to the talented artists living and working in our community.  The project achieved these goals, garnered national media attention, and resulted in a few surprising outcomes that have given the project an extended life, long after the end of 2012’s Banned Books Week.”       

The cards were a hit locally and nationally (and internationally!) but more importantly  they were right in line with our marketing goals.

• A huge part of our marketing efforts at LPL involves building partnerships and engaging different segments of our community.  For this project, we created new partnerships with arts organizations and directly engaged local artists, a large segment of the local population.
• We have worked to position the library as both a gateway to our community and a showcase for all of the unique aspects of it.  By limiting the project to local artists, we were able to highlight just how artsy Lawrence is. Also, the project gives a very good glimpse into this college town’s values and their collective belief in intellectual freedom, the power of literature, and the importance of art.
•  As any successful library does, LPL also seeks to align ourselves with broad community and civic goals.  Lawrence is currently working to become a regional and national arts destination, with a coalition of community groups marketing all of the artists, galleries, festivals, and venues.  With the local, regional, and national media attention they received, the cards effectively highlighted the amazing artists living and working in Lawrence.

To read more about the project – or if you’ve ever wanted to know just what goes into an entry – check out our submission for the award.  This three page narrative outlines the whole project, from concept to execution to the local (featured on the front page every day during the week) and national press coverage (Hello, HuffPost!) we received.

While the idea was unique and the press coverage was great, what really made the project great was the amazing artwork from artists living and working right here in Lawrence.  The beautiful and engaging local art was my favorite part of the whole project.

My second favorite part of the project is yet to come.  I received many, many emails and phone calls from libraries around the country asking if they could steal the idea. I told them “Of course! And we’re librarians, we borrow, we don’t steal!”  I hope that for the 2013 Banned Books Week, we will see more libraries doing cards and they can be traded by libraries around the country.

For those who hold the purse strings at LPL, their favorite part is probably the  money attached to the project.  The $10,000 check that comes with the award is great, but what was really neat about the project was that we were able to meet national and international demand for the cards by selling them via our website.  By doing a second print run of cards and quickly setting up a PayPal account, we were able to not only create a small revenue source for the library’s marketing budget, but we were also able to give a little something back to the artists, who submitted their pieces with no expectation of monetary gain.  And yes, the cards are still available for purchase.  We only have about two hundred sets left, so if you want one, order yours soon!  To date, we have shipped cards to every state in the US, as well as England, Australia, and Canada.

And speaking of money, the project was made possible by the good folks at the Freedom to Read Foundation and their annual Judith F. Krug Memorial Grants.  If you aren’t aware of them and their work, check out their website and Facebook page – Jonathan Kelly and crew are fighting the good fight!  Also, LPL’s Friends of the Library generously matched the FTRF grant, providing additional money for printing, artist’s reception, and more.

And since this post is starting to run long like an Oscar speech, I have to thank two more people who were integral to this project.  LPL is so lucky to have a Foundation to support it and an amazingly talented Foundation Director in Kathleen Morgan.  She wrote the FTRF grant application and supported the project every step of the way.  Also, I had tried to turn this idea into a reality for a few years without success.  LPL’s fantastic new director, Brad Allen, greenlighted the project in his first month on the job last year. He saw not only the creative potential in the project but he also realized that it was a project that would resonate deeply in Lawrence, a town full of artists and intellectuals.

Although I’ll be working for Chapel Hill Public Library then, I’ll be at ALA in Chicago and will attend the John Cotton Dana Awards Ceremony on Sunday. I look forward to meeting the other award recipients and “trading” great ideas for innovative marketing and PR projects…

Why is this? Clearly, lots of libraries are doing book displays and lots want to do them better. And why are book displays important? I offer this answer in the conclusion to the article:

“And if you are wondering why displays are important at all, I have just two words for you – book discovery. It is the buzzword of the moment for libraries, booksellers, and publishers, with conferences devoted to the concept and new products that aim to make it easier. There are some librarians who will lament that this fancy new buzzword reflects what we have always done – help readers find their next book. However, in an era where readers can find discover books in the supermarket, on their iPhone, via Amazon, and from social sites such as Goodreads and Pinterest, we need to make sure that libraries are engaged in book discovery and consider it a priority. Better book displays are just one way of helping readers discover great books.”

Read the full article here…

1. Where did you get your library education? (And I’m not talking about where you went to library school, if you did go to library school!)

My unofficial library education started in high school, when I joined the Library Club. We were a small (geeky) group who spent some study-hall periods helping the librarian, Mrs. Hower. Then, at Temple University’s Ambler Campus, I had my work-study job in the library for 3 years, so I learned a ton of things. At that time (late ’80s), the TUAC library was switching from its card catalog to its first online catalog, and I helped check the books and link them to the proper MARC records.

After graduating from Temple with my Journalism degree, I accepted a full-time job in the library where I’d been working. I handled all the Reserves processing and ran a laptop loaner program. In later years, I added to my skillset by simultaneously working with Serials at Shenandoah University’s Smith Library and by being a part-time circ clerk at Winchester Public Library (both in Winchester, VA). I helped with electronic transitions at those two libraries too—and each was using a different OPAC vendor, so that got pretty interesting!

In the early ’90s I joined Information Today, Inc. and began editing the Marketing Library Services newsletter. Over the years there (almost 19 now!), I also edited books, wrote for the Information Today newspaper, and worked my way up to Editor in Chief of Computers in Libraries magazine. There’s nothing like working on publications that report on the latest news and cutting-edge technologies to give you a well-rounded education in a field. Running publications forces you to stay abreast of a wealth of information and to understand how it all fits together.  

2. Who has taught you the most about libraries and/or marketing?

Back in my Temple days, it was definitely Sandi Thompson, TUAC’s main reference librarian. She taught me all the reference resources so I could help students with questions during the night / weekend hours that I worked without professional staff present.

As far as marketing, which has become my professional niche, nobody surpasses Dr. Christie Koontz of Florida State University, who has taught library marketing for years. I hired her to write Marketing Library Services’ first regular column, “Customer-Based Marketing,” and reading her work really solidified my knowledge. So much of what I do today goes back to Christie’s lessons.

The great thing is, I still get together with both Sandi and Christie at ALA conferences, and I’m so lucky to have these lasting relationships!

3. What’s the best book about marketing you’ve ever read?

It would seem arrogant to name my own book, The Accidental Library Marketer, but it would seem silly if I didn’t mention it. Honestly, I think TALM is an outstanding book because it covers the topic more completely than others, and it’s based on the Cycle of True Marketing that I created to help librarians understand how the process really works. And there must be something to it, because some universities are using TALM as a text for their MLIS marketing classes, which is quite an honor.

As for other books, there’s a collection of papers from SCONUL, the U.K.’s Society of College, National, and University Libraries, that really impressed me. It’s called Marketing Library Services—a SCONUL Working Paper.

4. What’s the title of a marketing book that needs to be written?

That’s a dangerous question! Let me see … as an impatient realist, I’d like to see Stop Making Cute Posters and Do REAL Marketing! or maybe You Need Marketing to Save Libraries in the Internet Age.

Chapter titles would include “Please Give Marketing a Budget!” and “If Directors Made Marketing a Priority, Life Could Be Easier,” along with “It’s Not About What YOU Want, It’s About What Customers Want.” OK, maybe those are less chapter titles and more what I wish I could scream to every administrator and board member in the world. <wink>

5. What’s the best marketing campaign you’ve ever been a part of?

That would have to be the one that won a John Cotton Dana award in 2010! I consulted on the New Jersey State Library’s “Tell Us Your Story” campaign, which asked libraries to get statements and stories from users about why they loved the library. It was more than that, though: Once the stories were written or recorded, subsequent steps asked the librarians to use them for publicity. Some stories stayed local, and others were picked up for a statewide campaign that reached citizens, legislators, etc. Some of the stories and videos were amazing.

The NJ State Library, under the guidance of marketing director Nancy Dowd, planned the whole campaign, doing surveys to see what would work, creating a brand and providing collateral materials to all participants, offering free marketing training, and planning a gala award ceremony that got good press coverage. It was the whole package.

6. What marketing campaign do you wish you’d been a part of?

Many of the initiatives that people refer to as “marketing campaigns” are really communications or publicity projects. So if I want to honestly answer what marketing campaign I wish I’d been able to work on, that narrows the field.

Library-wise, I’d have to say it’s “Building Your Base” from the Mid-Hudson Library System (MHLS) in New York state. This well-thought-out project reached out to various target markets with effective messages to educate them about public library services and ultimately to convince them to vote ‘yes’ when funding measures came to the ballot boxes. Rebekkah Smith Aldrich from MHLS did a great job with it, and has continued to take it to new heights with related follow-up campaigns that demonstrate how true marketing really works.

Also, I’ll share how I got here.  I was awarded a sponsorship by the the fine folks at EBSCO and ALA.  The competition asked for 250 words in response to the question, “The conversation starts here: How would you lead the discussion in your library to bring about meaningful change to an existing process, service, or procedure?”  Here’s what I wrote:  

In the age of e-books, maker spaces, and mobile apps, the conversation I want to lead in my library is about a non-technical, yet vitally important topic: customer service.

We are about to embark on a $19 million renovation and expansion that includes more computers, a maker space, and state-of-the-art technology throughout the building. However, as a marketing director who previously spent nearly twenty years on the reference desk, I realize that none of this will be meaningful change, unless we have great customer service to back it up.

I would lead this discussion by first ditching the term “customer service.“ Instead, I would talk about how today’s most successful public libraries are customer-centric. This goes beyond a smile at the reference desk. Being customer-centric means that every decision is made with our customers’ wants and needs in mind. A customer-centric organization is truly engaged and clearly relevant.

As marketing director, I can help make our library a customer-centric on by analyzing demographic data, identifying best practices, and starting conversations with our community. But to truly transform Lawrence Public Library into a customer-centric organization, I will need to energize and motivate staff and show them the value and reward of a customer-first approach.

At ALA Midwinter, I look forward to learning from and networking with professionals from cutting edge, customer-centric libraries so that I can return to Lawrence ready to lead the change — armed with great ideas and a smile from the marketing desk.

My essay reflects my core belief that libraries are, at their core, a human business.  Books might be our brand, but our customers are our future.  Figuring out what they want and how to deliver it is more important now than ever.  Apparently, I’m not alone in this belief. The press release for the 2013 sponsorships notes that:

Each winner outlined a fresh approach to connecting with both patrons and colleagues to drive change in his or her library. Nonetheless, all of the essays shared a common theme of making patrons’ needs the central focus of the library’s goals and decisions. Some strategies for achieving this objective, according to the winners, include implementing more customer-centric decisions in the library; using the power of social media to serve under-reached patron groups; and bringing together patrons and library staff to meet the challenges associated with access to exclusive content.

You can read the other winning essays here.

I am so thankful to EBSCO and ALA for giving me the opportunity to come to Seattle and connect with other libraries and library marketers.  Keep an eye out here for what I learn!

This is not only a huge logistical undertaking, but it has been a major communications initiative as well. We have successfully used traditional tools – flyers, signs, e-blasts, press releases, etc. – to keep our community informed about the move.  However, we have turned to new media methods to keep our community engaged and excited about what’s happening at their library.  

This is the first of a two-part series that looks first at what we did on social media leading up to the move and then follows with a look at what we are doing during the move.  Look for part two later this week.

In the weeks leading up to the move, we covered the traditional bases including:

• Large vinyl banners in the lobby and signage at all public service desks
• “We’re Moving” buttons and talking points issued to staff
• Press release to media and community partners
• Newspaper, radio, and TV ads
• Updates on website and e-blasts to mailing lists

This is all important communication, but we have a large community following on social media who – rightly so – feel a great deal of ownership in the library. They were clamoring for more insight into the move – How would we accomplish it?  Were we coping with the stress? Could they do anything to help?

In order to move from simply informing our public to engaging them in this process, we turned to social media. Over the past two years, we have positioned our library as a community-owned destination that is fresh and funky, hyper local and deeply engaged. Social media has played an important role in this positioning.  I am also extremely fortunate to coordinate a social media team comprised of dedicated, professional, creative, and just plain fun folks.  We got together a few months ago to brainstorm creative ways to spread the word about the pending move and closure. Here are some of the ideas we put into action.

- Since we are moving into a building formerly occupied by Borders, the running joke is “It will be just like Borders.  Only free.” The “Free Borders” hook really resonates with our public.  When the lease on the space was signed, we had a local sign company mock up an image of what the library sign would look like on the building. We put this image up on our Facebook page to make the announcement – note the number of likes, comments, and shares:

- Our Facebook team started a “Farewell to the Library” series of photos featuring staff members saying goodbye to various aspects of our building.  Miss Linda has done story times for generations of Lawrence kids – the number of likes and shares prove she is a beloved community character:

- We also encouraged folks to stop by and check out 50 items – the maximum number allowed per card.  This way, we would have less to move!  This also resonated with folks, as seen in the responses to our posts and tweets, as well as in the circulation numbers in the days before we closed for the move:

- On Twitter, we tweeted frequently about the pending move, especially in the week or so leading up to the closure.  Here’s some of our Twitter team’s handiwork:

And a few responses from our followers:

And our fledgling video team created this super creative piece:

The doors closed on Monday, January 7th and while we still had people coming up and reading the “Closed Until January 22nd” signs and scratching their heads, we also knew that a broad swath of our community had heard about the move from a variety of sources and through a mix of straight information and inventive storytelling.

Later this week, I’ll post about the *really* creative social media initiatives we have going on while we are closed.  If you can’t wait until then, feel free to follow us on Facebook and on Twitter and see what’s happening.

And a personal note to Jenny, Kristin, Molly, Ransom, Tricia, Kevin, Jeff, Becca, Karen, and the rest of the LPL Social Media crew – if you are reading this, I send you my everlasting thanks and major WOOTS!  Y’all are amazing.

For this installment of the 658.8 Interview, I went across the pond and reached out to Ned Potter.  Ned is the author of The Marketing Toolkit and he writes about library marketing at his blog of the same name.  His book is chock full of case studies and his site contains even more.  I hope I get to meet Ned at a conference one day and chat between sessions!

1. Where did you get your library education? (And I’m not talking about where you went to library school, if you did go to library school!)           Honestly, I got much of it online. Pretty much every day I’ll ask Twitter a question and apply the answers in my job. There’s so many great blogs out there – you can learn so much these days, without having to go anywhere or pay anything.

That said, events and conferences – particularly the little chats with people BETWEEN sessions rather than the presentations themselves – have been really important to me and my development. And there’s no substitute for just doing a job to really learn how it all works. 

That’s a tough question. Marketing wise, Terry Kendrick has taught me a lot. I’ve been very aware of Stephen Abrams shaping my thinking, and filling in a lot of gaps for me about how marketing works in the Special Libraries environment. In terms of libraries in general Bobbi Newman has been a big influence on me, as has Andy Priestner in the UK.

Aside from reading my own a billion times to proof read it, I must admit I’ve only read two in full! So I’ll call it a draw – Terry Kendrick’s Strategic Marketing Plans that Really Work, and Nancy Dowd et al’s Bite-Sized Marketing.

That’s a great question. I can think of a million. What about ‘Actually most people DON’T need authoritative information, Google is fine 99% of the time – so what else are you going to get them in through the doors?’ Or ‘Stop marketing to people who already like your library anyway’  Or maybe ‘Stop worrying about upsetting a tiny minority, and start trying to inspire the people that matter’. Sorry, I know that all sounds slightly cynical and cross! But I think these are important issues, we do need to confront this stuff head on. I’d love to read a library marketing book written by a non-librarian.

Over the summer I managed our Marketing Intern, who was a film-maker – together we made about 20 films to market the library at the University of York (UK). You can see the results at www.youtube.com/yorkinformation. It was completely absorbing (and exhausting – the day we shot the Virtual Tour I felt like my 9-5 had lasted about 24hrs!) and the results have been great. Marketing with video is something we all need to be doing now, and I think we’ve done it well at York.

Library-wise, it’s hard to see past Troy Public Library in Michigan – their brilliant book burning campaign on YouTube. So brave, ultimately so effective, and so atypical! Fantastic stuff. It’s not just well-executed, and attention-grabbing, and modern – it changed people’s behaviour. That’s what we should be trying to achieve.

Cheers, Ned!

At Lawrence Public Library, we have developed a social media presence that is engaging, responsive, locally-focused, and fun. While we post a lot of funny memes, share book-related photos (often cats are involved), and ask goofy questions, there is actually a well thought out strategy behind it.  A strategy that in the past two years has tripled our following on Facebook and Twitter, led to increased engagement on both platforms, and resulted in real, measurable outcomes such as increased partnerships, new programs, and a higher visibility in our community.

When I began coordinating our social media just over two years ago, I realized that we needed a guiding document, but I did not want a lengthy policy piece – something that detailed exactly what can and cannot be said on social media, who can and cannot say it, or full of language that might stifle creativity or seem too corporate in tone.

What I did want was something that would outline who we wanted to be on social media, what we wanted to do, and lay out some basic rules of engagement.  I also wanted it to be short!  Here the text of the one-page document that developed: 

LAWRENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY SOCIAL MEDIA PRINCIPLES 

OUR PURPOSE – Why do we do social media?  What is our goal?

- To inform and engage our community
- To listen to and respond to our customers
- To market our services, programs, and collections
- To position ourselves as a knowledge leader and essential destination on the Lawrence social media network

OUR STRATEGY – How will we work toward our goals?

- Promote our community and partner organizations
- Start conversations with our users by asking questions and gathering opinions
- Participate in conversations happening in the community
- Actively listen to what customers are saying and respond appropriately
- Build relationships by passing along content of others – community partners, local bloggers, etc.
- Promote our events, collections, and services

OUR CONTENT – What will we say?

- News & events (Lawrence events, book and pop culture news)
- Information about collections, services, new features, etc.
- Original content (Reviews, recommendations, etc.)
- Pass along relevant content of others (Link to local blogs, retweet others, etc.)
- Cross promote our own social media channels (Tweet about new blog post, etc)
- Responses to questions and comments

OUR TONE – How will we say it?

- We will be honest and authentic, not snarky or sarcastic
- We will be respectful to all commenters, positive and negative
- We will say please and thank you
- We will not post anything on social media that we would not say at a service desk

That’s it! When a new Social Media Team member comes on board, I review this with them and then turn them loose. This approach requires a certain level of trust, but it has not steered us wrong. It also helps that I recruit staff who are already somewhat engaged in social media in their personal lives.

Two things I’ll highlight in this document – 1. I purposefully did not call it a policy, instead it reflects our  principles.  Instead of a top-down, bureaucratic tone, this helps engender the idea that we are all working toward a shared goal with a shared vision 2. The final bullet point - We will not post anything on social media that we would not say at a service desk. - has served us well.  We do some edgy things on social media, but the “service desk” test has developed has a great way to check ourselves and make sure that we aren’t going over the edge.

Use this – The American Library Association released an “Ebook Media and Communications Toolkit” that can help librarians communicate about the state of ebooks in libraries.  At Lawrence Public Library, we repurposed some of the content for a feature on our website. 

Join this – There’s a new Facebook group for library marketing folks, hosted by Nancy Dowd and the crew at LibraryAware. If you’d like to join the group and share library marketing ideas and info, visit the page and click the join/request membership link.

Try this – At Lawrence Pubic Library, we’ve been having a lot of fun with memes this week.  Inspired in part our own success posting bookish memes on our Facebook page and by Ben Bizzle and this campaign, we’ve been making ecards to promote library collections and services. To make your own memes, try someecards.com or memegenerator.net

Apply for this – The deadline for the new LibraryAware Community Award has been extended to February 1, 2013.  That’s the same day that submissions for the John Cotton Dana Award are due. There’s also the IFLA Marketing Award, with applications due on January 15th.

At every local, regional, and national conference I’ve attended in the past year or so, one of the frequent buzzwords has been partnerships. In an era of decreased budgets, over-stretched staff, and limited resources, partnerships make more sense than ever. Here are a half dozen partnerships that public libraries can readily develop – for programs, PR, and more.

If you’re wondering how to get starting developing these relationships, I suggest a cup of coffee. Contact the marketing officer or program director or even the agency head, and offer to buy them a cup of coffee.  Let them know that you’d like to partner more and be ready to brainstorm possibilities.  A good strategy is to start small – consider what the lowest-hanging fruit is and use that as a first effort. And don’t forget that partnerships are a two-way street: be prepared to discuss both what they can do for you and what value you can offer them in return. 

1. Local bookstore – Whether your community is home to an independent bookseller or a national chain, you should think of them as collaborators, not competitors. Advertise their events and ask them to advertise yours. If you have an author coming, bring them in to sell books. If they have an author interested in coming, but not the space to accommodate them, offer up the library auditorium at no charge. This partnership can pay dividends: A library that has a strong relationship with its local bookseller is appealing to publishers and marketing reps when they consider where to send an author on tour.  

2. Parks & Recreation – Libraries engage the mind.  Parks & Rec departments engage the body. What a great match!  This is a gold mine for programs  - Lawrence Public Library has a very popular annual “Bookworms and Waterbugs” event during summer reading. Kids start out at the library for story time and then cross the street for a free swim.  Most Parks & Rec Departments go well beyond sports programs – ask for a table at a community festival they sponsor or offer to bring a mobile display of cookbooks to a holiday cooking class.

3. Chamber of Commerce - We know that libraries play an important role in the economic development mix, but does your local Chamber know? Reaching out to your Chamber of Commerce is essential.  Ask for a meeting and hand sell them all of the library  resources that touch on jobs, small business, and economic development. This list might include conference rooms for client meetings, computer classes, business e-resources, and books about writing business plans.

Other ideas: Ask if you can development a presentation for the Chamber about ways the library can help with economic development. Offer to host a Chamber function at the library. Create an attractive brochure, specifically aimed at the business community, that contains a consolidated list of library business resources and ask of the Chamber will display them at their office.

4. Moms/Dads Clubs Talk about a target audience! These groups are always looking for fun outings and activities and places to hold meetings and social events.  Find out the leaders of these groups and reach out to them.  The great thing about these organizations is they often maintain a website and/or calendar of local family friendly events – great (and free) advertising for your children’s and family programs.

5. Visitor’s Bureau Along with Visitor Centers, public libraries are one of main gateways to a community – both for visitors and new residents.  Make sure the staff at the Visitor’s Center is familiar with what the library offers.  If possible, put library brochures and event flyers there – and offer to distribute their marketing materials at the library. One key message for visitors to your town is that the library is a place where they can check their email or hop on free WiFi during their visit.

6. Local university Or college. Or community college. I love working for a public library in a college town, in part because of the wealth of great partnership possibilities. Most institutions of higher education are always looking for ways to strengthen town-gown relationships. Check out this previous post for ten ways to reach out to your local college or university.

This list is by no means inclusive – it’s just a start! At Lawrence Public Library, we have strong partnerships with the local Arts Center, the Historical Society, the School District, and more key community organizations.  Sustaining these partnerships takes time and attention, but it is well worth it.

Who are you partnering with? How is it paying off for you?