Economic Challenges - ALA Compiles Great Information

The economy - that's the topic of conversation everywhere. I've had several people ask about how to educate their communities on the library's importance during these hard economic times. There have been discussions on using the value calculator, telling the library story and marketing the library staff. All good topics for discussion. ALA has done a wonderful job pulling a lot of this information together in a web site: www.ala.org/economynews.
Hope this helps. If you've done some work on this at your library, please feel free to share your comments on the blog.

Did you know that 68% of Americans have library cards. That's the greatest amount since ALA started measuring in 1990?

Driving Traffic to Your Web Site

I just read a great article "How to Drive Traffic to Your Website, by Aaron Schmidt and Sarah Houghton-Jan, in Marketing Library Services. The authors start with a great premise, "if you are not offering relevant services or interesting content on your site, there's really nothing to promote." So true! The article stresses two key tips; join the community conversations and list your site where people are searching. Reading the article I had several ah ah moments. The article provides numerous web sites, one was a listing of free wireless network directories. What a great way to drive traffic to your library - make sure folks know you have a free wireless network. So check out the article at http://www.infotoday.com/MLS/nov08/Schmidt_Houghton-Jan.shtml

Brochures and More

I was doing some reading over the Thanksgiving holiday and came across an interesting article on designing brochures. Thought with the new year right around the corner, folks might be thinking about creating some new publicity materials. I loved the fact that the article stressed the importance of "gearing the language in the brochure to the customer." I think often we flip to our "library lingo" mode and don't focus on communicating with the customer.
Check it out at http://www.hbgraphics.com/articles/design_broch.htm