Nancy with a John Cotton Dana Award!

Here's a quick shot from this afternoon's John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award ceremony. Nancy won for the NJ State Library's "Tell Us Your Story" campaign. I'll do a longer post w/ more pictures once I'm home with a better internet connection, but I wanted to share the happiness without delay!

See You at ALA update :-)

I'm heading out tomorrow and hope to meet many of you this time! I'm speaking at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday morning for LLAMA's program, "John Cotton Dana Winners Tell All". School Media Specialsts can catch me at 4 pm for the "How to Tell a Strategic Story".


Following Kathys' successful book signing at last year's PR Swap, my co-authors and I will be signing our book at 12:30. Peggy Barber will be signing her new book earlier (maybe around 11:30?). We were a little nervous because the first printing of Bite-Sized had been sold out, but ALA Publications went into high gear and got a second printing to the presses so we'll have copies on hand. Plus we'll be selling them at a discount :-)

I'm going to try to get over to the Battle Deck Tournament and may get a glimpse of the Duchess (is she still coming??). No blackberry - lost mine and want to wait for the new iPhone. So will be going "Old School" and using a laptop this conference!

Have fun! -Nancy

Hope to See You at ALA!

Nancy & I will both be at the American Library Association conference over the coming week. Nancy is speaking a few times and I'm attending. We'll both be at the Swap & Shop and at the John Cotton Dana Awards ceremony. Hope to see some of you there!

Shanachies in New Zealand!

If you're a regular readers, you'll remember previous posts about the Shanachies, the world-travelling Dutch librarians. (This one & others -- "search on Shanachies")
Well they're on tour again, this time in Australia and New Zealand.

There's a nice article about them online at Stuff.co.nz. They're trying as always to help libraries gear up for new trends and technologies so they can remain relevant to their users. The article refers to it as "future-proofing," which is essential.

Great work, Erik & Jaap!

This Tiny Brochure Packs a Big Punch

I'm happy to report that the wallet-sized, folded brochures called Quotable Facts About America's Libraries has been updated for 2010. Get some today, make them available to all staff members, and ask each person to memorize one or two quotes that they can use at every opportunity.

My old favorite is still on this year's list: "There are more public libraries than McDonald’s in the U.S.—a total of 16,604 including branches." I can't tell you how many times I've told that to laypeople and watched their eyebrows raise or their jaws drop. I think my new shocker might be this: "Americans spend more than twice as much on candy as they do on public libraries." These are easy to remember and use on an everyday basis.

You can buy them at the ALA Store, order them anytime, or even download and print them from the website. They come in English or Spanish. This site suggests that you drop some off brochures off during legislative visits. Brilliant!

Kathy's Invitation to the John Cotton Dana Awards Ceremony

This is always one of the best pieces of mail I get all year!!!

These awards are for the best library public relations campaigns, and it's always inspiring to read about what wonderful projects have won. And the contributing sponsor, HW Wilson and its Foundation, always put on quite a lovely affair, on par with the accomplishments they're recognizing. As editor of the Marketing Library Services newsletter, I always attend to cover it. This year, though, will be especially exciting, b/c I was part of one of the winning teams!! The amazing Nancy Dowd (M Word blog founder) ran the Tell Us Your Story campaign at the NJ State Library that is getting one of the awards this year. We are so thrilled!!

Look for us to post pictures of this year's ceremony later this month. (And here's the post from last year's JCD Awards tea.)

'Bleeding Libraries' Video Dramatizes What Happens When School Libraries Close

A friend on Facebook, Leslie Kahn, shared this video there and I wanted to pass it on. It's a well-done, 3.5-minute video that's a dramatic plea to save school libraries. Might be something to play at your next school board or town council meeting...

Send Your Materials to Swap & Shop Now!

I'm posting this Call for Materials on behalf of the good folks who run the Swap & Shop at ALA's Annual Conference. The Swap is always a great event that's well worth your time if you have anything to do with marketing and promotion.

Swap & Shop is where PEOPLE LIKE YOU send in all sorts of promo materials so that others can see and learn from them. (Details below) So you can participate even if you're not going to ALA. If you will be in DC later this month, then come to the Swap (on the Exhibit Hall floor) to pick up as many samples materials as you like, and take them home to use as inspiration for your own PR goodies.

Also at Swap, there are award presenations for the event's Best of Show Awards, as well as recognition of other winners. John Cotton Dana-winning campaign materials are also on display for you to study and learn from. Cool people have "vendor" tables there too--cool people like PR Docs Linda Wallace and Peggy Barber, the good folks from JanWay (promo-product printers), oh, and, um, Me. I'll have a table where I'll give away sample issues of the Marketing Library Services newsletter, sell my book The Accidental Library Marketer, and answer questions. What's even more exciting is that my M Word partner Nancy Dowd will be there (with both co-authors) signing copies of her book, Bite-Sized Marketing. Please stop by!

Swap and Shop Materials Needed!

Does your library produce interesting, eye-catching, beautiful bookmarks, brochures, fliers, posters, magnets, and other materials to promote your library’s wonderful services and resources? Do you have extra inventory you can spare? If so, please contribute them to the Swap and Shop: PR X-Change at this year’s American Library Association annual conference in Washington. This is your chance to inspire your colleagues, and show off your great work to the nearly 1,000 library professionals who attend the event each year to collect samples of promotional materials and to network with others.

To contribute materials, please send boxes with a pre-made mailing label. To get a PDF of the necessary label, contact Renee Di Pilato, Committee Chair, at rdipilato@alexandria.lib.va.us.

Materials need to be received by June 16, 2010.

For those of you attending the conference, please join us at the Swap and Shop: PR X-Change event, located by the special events area in the Exhibit Hall between 11:00 and 1:30 on Sunday, June 27th, to pick up great promotional materials from North American libraries of all types.

This year’s Swap and Shop will also feature book signings by Peggy Barber, author of Building a Buzz: Libraries & Word-of-Mouth Marketing and Nancy Dowd, author of Bite-Sized Marketing: Realistic Solutions for the Overworked Librarian (attendees receive a special discount), social networking talk tables, as well as the Best of Show awards ceremony at 12:30pm.

Swap and Shop: PR X-Change is an ongoing library marketing and public relations event held annually at ALA. It is sponsored by the Library Leadership Administration and Management Association.

Zach Parise: A NJ Library Champion

Free Webinar on Marketing this Thursday

Hello Readers, it's Kathy here! I want to let you know that I'll be giving a free webinar on marketing this Thursday, June 3, thanks to the good folks at Serials Solutions.

The vendor has been running a 4-part series of 30-minute webinars, and mine will be the final one (and the only one on marketing). Here are the details:

Marketing Your Library through Discovery: Next-generation catalogs or “discovery layers” are among the most promising technologies, enabling customers to explore the library independently - whether they are in the building or sitting at their computers. Kathy Dempsey, editor of the Marketing Library Services newsletter, author of The Accidental Library Marketer, and former editor-in-chief of Computers in Libraries magazine, will help us explore the issue in having a customer-facing perspective and then guide us to the elements of marketing that are tied up in discovery. Session is on June 3 at 11:00 am PDT/2:00 pm EDT.

We hope you can attend one of these sessions. If you can't attend, we will be recording and archiving these sessions for you to review later. Simply register for an event to be contacted when the recording for that event becomes available.

To register, just follow this link. It's quick & easy.

After you register, you'll get an email with the official invitation to the webinar, which will give you the link you'll need to log in. It will take place with LiveMeeting software, but you don't have to download anything ahead of time. Just start logging in for the webinar 15 or 20 minutes before it starts, and the login process will take care of everything for you. No muss, no fuss!

Again, even if you can't listen in on Thursday, sign up before it starts so you'll get info about when the recorded version becomes available; then you can listen at your leisure. (the live show starts at 2pm Eastern US time.) I'll be talking about the Cycle of True Marketing, why Amazon's Kindle is so successful, how "discovery layer" products help with marketing, and how you can stay relevant to the public.

I hope you'll join Serials Solutions and I this Thursday morning!