Marketing

Wilmington Public Library enlists community input alongside vibrant in-house marketing to build excitement around innovative events. San José Public Library, CA, and Worcester Public Library, MA, received honorable mentions.

My journey into librarianship was a bit unusual: Unlike those who began as a page or in an LIS role fresh out of grad school, my library career started in marketing. It was my job to understand the many ways the library brought value to the community and to develop stories and campaigns that shed light on the best aspects of our work. I was so inspired by what I saw in our branches that I eventually pursued a library degree. And as I deepened my knowledge, I saw that libraries could benefit from more attention to external communication.

These are only a few of the wide-ranging limited edition library card iterations popping up seemingly everywhere. Why are all these libraries putting time and resources into small-run cards?

On April 25, the Peabody Awards revealed the list of 68 nominations for 2023, chosen from a field of 1,100 entries. This year’s contenders include popular TV series such as The Bear, Bluey, and Reservation Dogs, documentaries about Judy Blume and Little Richard, children’s programming, newscasts—and two offerings from public libraries: Milwaukee Public Library’s social media streams in the interactive and immersive media category, and Borrowed and Banned, a 10-episode podcast from Brooklyn Public Library in the podcast/radio category.

In 2023, Archibald’s work on two different projects generated enormous impact for the library and demonstrated that effective graphic design can make a difference in library programming.

The Kansas City Public Library (KCPL) and San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) last Thursday announced that they would team up on a Tackle Censorship campaign with a friendly wager on the game. As a result of Kansas City's 25–22 win last night, a library representative from SFPL will wear Kansas City gear and post a recording of themselves reading from a banned book on the library’s social media channels.

Faced with a major post-lockdown attendance drop, the marketing team at Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library is re-engaging patrons with creative, data-driven campaigns. Patchogue Medford Library, NY, received honorable mention.

Brooke McCauley’s career spans activism and politics, anti-hunger/anti-poverty advocacy, and lobbying. In 2019, she learned about a new role at the Howard County Library System—customer experience manager—and made it her own.

Most of the time, library promotion involves a lot of announcements like, “We offer homework help” or “We’ve got a new website” or “Come to our program.” These promotions are informative, but they lack the one magical thing that people respond to: emotion.