Librarian in a Banana Suit

Our guest speaker at my library’s Staff Development Day yesterday was none other than world-famous librarian Nancy Pearl!  You may already know her from the “Shushing Librarian Action Figure.”  Or, for you more literary types, NPR’s Morning Edition. Yep, my library’s pretty hip.

At our staff day, Nancy described herself as a “reader” who comes at books from both a library and a bookstore background.  But public librarianship is near to her heart — she calls it one of the only two democratic institutions left in our communities, the other being public schools. They remain places where people from all walks of life and all ages can come get the information they need.

And Nancy is all about her readers.  When I was first initiated into the field of librarianship, I really loathed the idea of “Readers’ Advisory.” Too prescriptive and authoritative, gross!  But Nancy and her peers call it “Readers’ Services,” and she describes her work as collaborative: a conversation and a relationship between readers.  Ooh, I like that — sounds a little more Freireian!  And, argues Pearl, “people are desperate for ANY kind of direction about what to read… and that’s the role librarians can fill.”  Consider me a convert.

The heart of Nancy’s talk was the so-called Three-Legged Stool of Librarianship. She identifies three functions that are so important the stool will wobble unless they’re balanced: (more…)

I recently attended a Mid-America Library Alliance (MALA) workshop called Marketing at the Point of Contact.  The class was taught by Kasey Riley, who is Communications Manager at the award-winning Johnson County Library and was previously faculty at Avila University.  You may already know her work from JoCo’s new book truck campaign:

Always a sucker for a good Moby Dick joke, I came away from the workshop with a refreshed outlook and focus.  Kasey made several chewy points that are worth pondering — and maybe even debating:

• Libraries often try to be all things for all people… but can that dilute our message and confuse our patrons about what we can offer them?  Focusing your message (and your overall goals & strategy) can help.
• “AIDA” is a gold standard of the marketing industry: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action.  Patrons probably won’t “act” unless you’ve gotten them past the other 3 phases, first.
• Use quantifiable goals and objectives to plan your promotional strategy.  If you want 5 more people to join your regular monthly group,  plan a strategy that will help you accomplish that specific goal.
• “Shoot ‘em Straight!” Kasey recommended using simple, positive, more customer-centric language when we communicate with our patrons, such as “Questions?” instead of “Reference,” and “Teen” instead of “YA.”
• Another simple, positive patron communication: name tags! Aliases can be used if staff safety is a concern.

My biggest takeaway of the morning was Kasey’s multi-faceted approach to moving patrons to action, including:

• professional & consistent signage
• a website presence
• social media posts (e.g. library and personal facebook & twitter pages)
• blog posts (library and personal blogs)
• targeted emails
• word-of-mouth

One trick she uses is to formulate 3 bullet points about the service or event she’s promoting, and then she asks her colleagues, friends, and family to share those 3 bullet points throughout their networks, to create a ripple effect of awareness.  This is so easy to do, and I’ve already started including “please share this with your friends and family” in all of my promotional communications.

Kasey’s workshop inspired me to remain focused in my work goals and planning, and to avoid spreading myself so thin that I can’t adequately promote each special event.  I’m also excited to be developing a “promotions toolkit” for anyone at my library who hosts a special event for adults, to help demystify the process of promoting it.

Library folks: if you ever have the chance to take a workshop with Kasey Riley, I recommend it!