The Library 101 video debuted today at the Internet Librarian conference.  Created by Michael Porter (a.k.a. Libraryman) and David Lee King, the video is a foot-tapping, library-rocking tour-de-force.  Clear the next eight minutes in your schedule, put on some headphones, and enjoy:

The Library 101 website not only has the video, but also a collection of essays by prominent library supporters, as well as a “101 Resources and Things to Know” page that provides a great overview of just what they are striving to communicate.

To settle any bar bets, as well as disclose a connection:  I am in the video.  I first appear at the 30 second mark (though all you see is my arm and notebook computer), but show up later in full frame.

My using the computer for the “1″ and “0″ was the solution to a problem:  when the call went out for pictures of library people holding sheets of paper containing the magic numbers, I was on vacation in Branson, Missouri.  No printer.  I could probably have found a Kinkos, but it wouldn’t have gone over well with my family because, you see, I was on vacation.  Drawing the numbers might have worked for someone with artistic talent; not for me.

I really like my idea of using the computer… it fits the theme of the video:

So, I hope you watched and enjoyed the video… Michael and David deserve some serious positive feedback for their ideas and efforts.

The Lepper Library in Lisbon, Ohio has initiated a new program to deal with severe budget cuts:  they are asking their users to help out by sponsoring magazine subscriptions.

This is a creative and interesting way to help maintain and even expand a collection.  I could even see an effort to encourage people to purchase books by their favorite authors for the library’s collection (perhaps they could be given the first hold slot for checking out the item).

This isn’t as good of an option for academic libraries, but I suspect that there are some possibilities in this approach.

found via Save Ohio Libraries

Jenny Levine makes a great case on The Shifted Librarian for adding a feature to your sites that allows users to easily share your content via social networks.  Not only will this offer a way for your users to help spread the work about services and activities that you offer, but it can help them keep track of information they find so that they can revisit it later.  This will be a benefit for users of mobile browsers, which are rapidly becoming a more significant portion of visitors to our web sites.

You may notice that I have followed her advice and have added the Add to Any service to this blog, visible at the bottom of every post (and checked to ensure it validates against XHTML and CSS standards, of course; a requirement I have for any add-on).

With our increasing reliance on electronic record keeping, especially online records, it makes a lot of sense to consider the use of virtual bookplates for those items which would normally have a printed label affixed within the book:

• An item with a Virtual Bookplate from the University of Florida Smathers Libraries, which utilizes an 856 MARC field link to the virtual bookplate.
• A search box on their Donor web page gives donors (and others) an easy way to locate the donated items.
• The virtual bookplate for the item.
• A presentation on Slideshare (14 slides) providing an overview of their process.

This strikes me as an especially effective way to both recognize and promote donors.  The only real technical requirements are graphics software to create and edit the bookplate design, and the web space to store the finished graphics.  Neither should be a problem for any library willing to spend the time required to get the project rolling.

The people who created the above-linked presentation are conducting a survey on library practices on bookplates.

found via AcqNet-L

Coffee and Libraries go together (at least for some of us who are addicts of both).  That is why the Free Starbucks Coffee Recipe E-Book (direct link to zipped Pdf file) is a nifty download brought to you by CoffeeFair.

thanks to ResourceShelf for the link

To celebrate the 100th birthday of Louis L’Amour, Bantam Books is providing a free copy of “Education of a Wandering Man : The Centennial Hardcover Edition” to any free lending library in the United States.

found via the Unshelved blog

Marketing Your Library is a blog chock full of ideas, lists, and links for marketing, you know, your library!

from LISNews

There is a post on LISNews today about “Suitcase Libraries” in South Africa. These are basically small book collections in suitcases which are distributed to preschools to help encourage reading in areas with low literacy. The original article is here.

Viewing this caused me to think of two things:

1. The traveling libraries used by the Lighthouse Service, and
2. What if public libraries were to purchase several rolling carts, place an interesting range of books within the carts, and arrange to rotate these carts among various retirement and nursing homes? This could be combined with the ability to request materials (which could be delivered with the carts). The rotation could match the library’s checkout period (2 weeks, 3 weeks, etc.), and rotation of the carts could be done by library staff one day each period. During each cycle, one cart’s worth of books would be changed out for fresh material. I suspect that this could be a terrific service for a library to provide, given the interest in organizing it.

Just a thought!

Where can us library types get our temporary tattoo fix?  No need to head out on that highway, just take a gander at Archie McFee!

Could be a good promotional idea for a library….

from Librarian.net

Coming on the heels of my previous post is an article about just the sort of creativity I referred to, although it deals with programming rather than marketing.  Isn’t it better to get attention from activities than simply promoting, though?

from ResourceShelf

ALA’s ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) has posted an interesting article called “Developing a long-range and outreach plan for your academic library: The need for a marketing outreach plan“. It describes a series of promotional activities to market an academic library to the campus as a whole.

I am not sure that their approach is, as a whole, what a campus library needs for promotion. Their initial budget is $10,000, which I suspect is waaay beyond most marketing budgets, even for many of the larger libraries.

Some of the expense seems high: $3,000 annually for an e-newsletter, which although it includes the creation of a newsletter designed to reach 5,000 people, shouldn’t require more than someone who can create a listserv and design a good, basic template to contain the articles. Web hosting services usually offer some sort of site statistics in their packages.

I could consult with a library, helping to get it started and training someone on staff to keep it running, and not have it cost more than $600 dollars (and it wouldn’t require more than $70 per year to keep it going, as long as they used the tools and resources developed in the initial consultation.

Also: $4,000 of the cost is for signs and promotional giveaways. These are great: you need well-made signs, and giveaways are neat. Buy a bunch of customized pens, create your own bookmarks, and be creative in finding other things that your students will use that you can “brand”. However, I would skip the stickers, and make the money go a lot further than the few hundred students who would actually get the swag listed in the article.

Academic libraries that could consider spending $10,000 on this type of promotion (few and far between) are likely to be able to tap into campus resources for signs, promotions, and technical support. Those who cannot afford that type of money (most of us) can still do a great deal to promote their services, and oftentimes have a great deal of on-campus support to draw upon.

I recommend creative brainstorming among the library staff, with some funds available to support good ideas. The ideas themselves are free (as in priceless), and should be the core of your promotional activities. Plus, the library staff become part of the promotion, which is a bonus.

All of this, of course, has been my $0.02 (and assorted other change)

original link from ResourceShelf