Video Promotions of National ... Week/Month

Want to promote at your library the latest national ... [fill-in the blank] week (or month) beyond book displays and signs? How about promo trailers? These are videos that promote a library event, program, activity, service, collection, or whatever else you'd like the public to know about. They may also be used to promote national events, such as Banned Books Week or National Library Week. Here are some examples we've made over the years (we used to call them program trailers but decided promo trailers was more accurate):

"Banned Book" Trailers, by Mooresville Public Library

Libraries Transform

(2017 National Library Week Promo Trailer)

by Mooresville Public Library

National Family History Month (October)
(MPL Program Trailer #11)

Native American Heritage Month (November)
(MPL Program Trailer #14)

2014 National Library Week Promo Trailer
by Mooresville Public Library

National Library Week (April 10-16, 2011)
(MPL Program Trailer #18)

Readers' advisory videos may also be used to promote national events, such as Banned Books Week.

MEG-A-RAE #7

A Very VERY Special Banned Books Episode,

by Miss Rachel & Miss Meghan

MEG-A-RAE #8

Virtual Readout for 2012 Banned Books Week

by Miss Rachel & Miss Meghan

Promo trailers can also showcase library staff's participation in national library conferences.

MPL @ PLA, by Jaymi Edwards & Suzanne Walker

(MPL Promo Trailer #24)

Videos visually engage patrons while informing them about an upcoming national event that the library is observing. There's nothing wrong with old-fashioned book displays, but modern patrons are visually attuned. That's what over 70 years of television has done to change how we perceive things.

Some of our other posts on this blog discuss what you'll need to make your own library videos. It's really not so difficult. If we can do it, anyone can.

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"Library Spokescritters" Social Media Success Stories

Previously, we discussed how libraries could use "spokescritters" (i.e., resident animals) to promote their services and collections. Many of these "spokescritters" have taken to social media as their primary promotional vehicles. How successful have they been?
Consider Mooresville (Indiana) Public Library's feline roving reporter, Cauli Le Chat. Her blog, Cat's Eye View @ MPL, has been viewed extensively--as of right now, it has 475,341 viewings. We saw this graphic from yesterday's blog posting:
Total Blog Viewings (as of February 24, 2018) Cat's Eye View @ MPL
Mooresville Public Library (MPL) serves Brown Township in Morgan County, Indiana, which has a population under 15,000. Furthermore, Cauli Le Chat officially "retired" as roving reporter early last year, because she doesn't get out as much as she used to (she once lived down the street and would hangout outside the library--hence her "roving reporter" status), and al…

Book Challenges Due to Social Media Exposure

I work at Mooresville (Indiana) Public Library, and we occasionally receive challenges to items in our collections (usually books) that some patrons consider offensive, unfair, or contrary to their particular religious or value system. Most of these challenges come verbally from irate patrons complaining to the circulation desk staff. The library provides a written form in which patrons may explain their objections to specific items and their reasons, but, not surprisingly, many people don't want to commit their attacks to writing. It's much easier to simply bellow at library staff and demand that the "undesirable" materials be removed "immediately."
We insist that the form be completed before an independent committee will review any complaints. When patrons fill-out the form, they often cannot identify passages or page numbers upon which the offending words or ideas were presented. That, of course, if because many people who challenge books and wish to…

Using Video to Promote ALA Banned Books Week

When promoting ALA Banned BooksWeek (BBW), most librarians have probably turned to the ol' reliable book display, like so:

Click images to enlarge

Book displays are great. They centralize selected items, focus patrons' attention on a particular topic or theme, and they're relatively easy and inexpensive to produce. But they're just so, well, static. Stuff just sits there until patrons come along.
Another popular static medium we use to promote BBW is the customized book mark.

These take a bit more work but are fine as promotional tools, as far as they go.
How about something more, say, techno-savvy?

2018 Banned Books Week Promo Trailer by Mooresville (Indiana) Public Library

2016 Banned Books Week Promo Trailer by Mooresville (Indiana) Public Library

Since 2010 my library has used videos to promote BBW. There are the promo trailer variety (above) that help stimulate interest, and these are reasonably effective (some of ours have been viewed thousands of times). Book trailer…

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