Letters About Literature

Young readers write to an author describing how that author’s work somehow changed the reader’s view of the world or himself/herself. Readers respond to the book they’ve read by exploring the personal relationship between themselves, the author and the book’s characters or themes. Visit the website for specifics on entering, last years winners and even some fancy envelope art that carried the entries. http://www.lettersaboutliterature.org/home

Writing Prompt Ideas for November

• 11/5   Book Lover's Day - Share your favorite books relating to the work your nonprofit does. 
• 11/11   Veteran's Day -  Highlight volunteers, staff or clients who have served. 
• 11/15   America Recycles Day -  Share how your organization recycles. For a twist, try "recycling" old content that got a good response. 
• 11/17  Great American Smokeout -  Encourage your readers to put out their cigarettes for the day -- or encourage them to break some other bad habit related to your work. 
• 11/24  Thanksgiving (U.S.). Thanks supporters, clients, and volunteers. Email messages of gratitude around Thanksgiving are a great way to kick off a series of fundraising emails in November and December.

from Kiva Miller at www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com

Find Basic Computer Skills Help Here

Do you ever wish you had a way to refer people to places where they could get help with their basic computer skills? Take a look at a new resource--we are hoping it is a comprehensive look at the offerings for classes, labs, and one-on-one training for basic computer skills, arranged by county. We'll be rolling out this site to other service providers (Job Centers and Literacy Councils, to start with). It is easy to update, so if you have suggestions for additions, please let Leah know! http://techskillshelp.iflsweb.org

Boyceville Public Library Launched New Site

The Boyceville Public Library recently launched it's brand new website that is light and fun and full of great information.  The new site, as many of the new sites created for IFLS libraries, is easy to update and maintain by the librarians themselves.  So, take a peek and see what you think.

www.boycevillelibrary.org

Three Simple Marketing Rules All Libraries Should Live By...

1. Market the service, not the content.Telling people about content puts the onus on them to think about how they can integrate that content into their lives; many people simply don’t have time to analyse what we’re offering in that way. We should be making it explicit how we can help them so they need no imagination to understand it – and that comes from marketing services. To paraphrase the awesome Sara Batts, Content is, Services do. Doing is more useful to people than being, so when you have a very limited time in which to appeal to people with limited attention span, market to them what you can do.
   
2. No one cares about the how!Can’t stress this enough: libraries are seemingly process focused, but the the rest of the world is focused on results. When marketing a service we should concentrate on what people aspire to, not the tools which will get them there. A classic example is databases: we say things like “we subscribe to X databases which you can access via the library catalogue” or, even worse, we name them individually. We market the features; what people want to know about is the benefits. Like Mary Ellen Bates says, the way to market databases is to say ‘we provide you with information Google cannot find’.
3. Market what THEY value, but continue to do what WE value.
   The SLA’s Alignment Project unearthed some fascinating truths about what we as libraries and librarians think are important, and what our patrons and potential patrons think are important. There are marked differences, I’d urge you to read about it for yourselves. (To sum up, users put the emphasis on value-driven attributes, we put it on functional attributes. This is, essentially, points 1 and 2 above, mixed together.) But the key thing is this – it doesn’t mean the stuff we value isn’t important, it just means that it isn’t as valued AS highly by other people. So we continue to DO all the important stuff we value, we just concentrate the marketing on promoting the stuff THEY value.
   .

You don’t need to be a genius to do this stuff, or to have huge marketing budgets, or even loads of time. It’s just a case of reconfiguring our existing efforts to acknowledge some simple rules.

Any that you’d add?

- thewikiman blog

Traveling Exhibit Opportunity for Public Libraries

Ten public libraries will be selected to host an interactive exhibition called Discover Earth: A Century of Change. Maybe it will be your library!  Deadline to apply is coming up quickly.  Visit http://ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/ppo/programming/discoverearth/index.cfm for more information.

Hudson Area Library Mobile Website!

The first IFLS mobile site is here! Check out Hudson's site on your mobile device!  It's clean and simple and gets you what you need in a hurry.  More of these mobile library sites will be making their debuts in the future.


 m.hudsonpubliclibrary.org