Kay wrote a paper for LIS768 on the Cluetrain ten years later. She graciously allowed me to post an edit here. Thanks Kay! Michael Today’s economic situation would seemingly make libraries indispensible. Yet with budget cuts, many libraries are threatened with cut backs and closings. The natural reaction, based on fear, would be to go into preservation mode. Instead, libraries need to be moving into innovation mode, viewing this time as a chance to move ahead and connect with the public that hasn’t been using them. The disenfranchised public wants to know how the library will be relevant to them […]
Categories Marketing
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Take a look at http://voicethread.com/share/289291/ to see how the good folks at Darien Library are telling their story. Gretchen Hams, the Head of Children’s Services, shares information about Children’s Services via Voicethread. I will be watching all the opening day festivities for this innovative new library from afar! Congrats to all involved.
By Michael Casey & Michael Stephens The rules of marketing have changed. Do libraries know that? Corporate PR-types used to control the message. Sitting behind a desk, they’d write a carefully crafted press release and then send it off to newspapers and upload it to their web site. The attention the company got might barely justify the salary of the PR professional. Today’s world is fundamentally different. Neither news nor brand identity are controlled through press releases or carefully choreographed newspaper articles. Brands are molded and shaped by the audience-and the audience is everyone. People talk. And people listen. Social […]
Library Revolution ponders “one point that kept coming up at Computers in Libraries is the importance of not asking for feedback unless you actually intend on doing something with it.” http://libraryrevolution.com/2008/04/15/feedback-followthrough-and-rick-astley/ When you ask your staff, users, and colleagues for feedback, are you prepared to do something with that feedback? Do you have a mechanism in place for handling suggestions in a productive way? Are you ready to encourage the development of the ideas offered up, constructively criticize, and put forth the effort necessary to transform raw ideas into effective, creative, and innovative efforts? How do you prove that the suggestions […]
Via Stephen Abram, comes this PDF of results of the Table tracks at the SD SuperConference. There is just so much good here to think about. Please take a look. I’d adapt some of these into a staff meeting discussion or Staff Institute Planning Day. THE TOP FIVE: 1. Physical Space 2. Staffing 3. Web Technolgies 4. Collection Technologies 5. Community Development
Dear Michael – I heard you speak a couple of weeks ago and I remember the slide you shared about library Web sites and the data from the OCLC Perceptions report. I think you said that the library URL should be on everything we send out of the library. Just today, the our library PR person was told “We need the library’s website on every single piece of paper and information that goes out to the door” … to which this person replied “We don’t do that. Historically, we’ve never done that.” I emphasized how often I’ve heard that dictum […]
Great post at “The M Word:” http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/ideas-from-customer-service-is-new.html Andy Sernovitz on Damn! I Wish I’d Thought of That! posted a neat list of ideas he compiled from the panel “Customer service as community, community as customer service” at the Customer Service is the New Marketing Conference. Sounds like it was an all star panel: Gina Bianchini, Ning; Matt Mullenweg, WordPress ; Tara Huntl, Citizen Agency ; Patti Roll, Timbuk2; Brian Oberkirch, Small Good Thing. It has some good stuff for libraries to consider when we creating our campaigns. 1. When you open up to customer participation, your brand belongs to your […]
Virtual Reference business card Originally uploaded by Joey Digits Text message reference marketed via a business card. Joey – please let us know how it goes.
http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/blog/2007/12/03/time-management-for-creative-people-free-e-book/ A “Getting Things Done” primer for those who work on the Web (and others). Checkout out the chapters on harnessing the inbox and reviewing commitments.
http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/flip_flip_flip_goes_the_librar.php Darien Library’s new logo is written up at a branding blog: When you think of public libraries — that glorious old book smell, the studious people learning something new, the kind of light that is rarely found anywhere else, the challenge of judging books by their spine — their identity is probably the last thing you notice, consider or even care for… you are there for the books and what lies between their pages. And that’s exactly what C&G Partners celebrates in their design of the new identity for the Darien Public Library in the affluent town of Darien, […]