Information Professional

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A library marketing manifesto

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I just delivered a keynote at the LIANZA Conference, #SHOUT15, in New Zealand. It outlines a Library Marketing Manifesto - an attempt to boil everything down into five things we must do to be heard and listened to above the clamour of modern life. I know some people are uncomfortable with the word marketing, but essentially this is all about communication between us and our communities.

Specifically:

1. We will be community orientated
2. We will do what people need, but market what they want
3. We will cater for library novices and for library experts
4. We will keep things simple
5. We will coordinate our marketing into campaigns

Here are the slides:

The talk was recorded. Although the video inevitably mortifies me a bit, I'm delighted to have a record of the whole thing because I was so excited to be there, and the audience were so fantastically receptive.

Watch the talk here.

And finally, here are some excellent tweets which help explain the slides a little more. (I'll write about the experience of actually being in New Zealand and the rest of the conference later on.) The embedded version doesn't cover the full thing - you can view that online here if you wish.

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Using Prezi in the Academic Library

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The zooming presentation tool Prezi is a very divisive alternative to PowerPoint. Prezi's 40 million users have created MANY bad presentations since it launched in 2009, and for that reason it has a bad rep in some circles - poorly made Prezis make the audience feel motion-sick, and even really well made Prezis are sometimes more about the tool and the presenter than they are about the content and the audience. Conversely some people LOVE it: "I just use Prezi for everything" is a phrase you hear sometimes, which personally I view as a mistake.

My own feelings on Prezi are somewhere in the middle - I don't use it for about 75% of the presentations I create, but I don't hate it either. It can be a really effective tool in the academic environment, and at my institution we've had students and staff love what we've done with it. The key is, use Prezi with a good reason. Otherwise, don't.

So here are some good uses for Prezi in the academic library:

1. Interactive Maps of the Library

My favourite use for Prezi is take something static, and make it dynamic. You can stretch any image as large as you want (as long as it's not a low-res image) and make it the background to your entire presentation, then add points of interaction with that image.

This is the main example from York - our interactive map of the library:

This serves two purposes. Firstly it sits online (and embedded in various places on our website and Libguides) for the students to interact with in their own time. The students appreciate this because the information about the library, of which there is a LOT, is arranged geographically. This level of context makes it easier to get to grips with. The non-linear qualities of Prezi mean that if, for example, the student wants to know what's on the second floor of the Fairhurst building, they just click on the second floor of the Fairhurst building. (Try it in the map above!) It goes straight there - rather than having to skip a bunch of slides or scroll through a bunch of text or sit through a video. Talking of video, I've embedded about 10 videos in this Prezi at appropriate points - anyone who's ever tried to embed videos in PowerPoint know what a thankless task that is... In Prezi you just copy and paste in the YouTube URL and it does the rest.

The second purpose is to use it in Induction talks. We create department-specific versions of it - these tend to be far less detailed than the full version above, covering less ground, but adding in more subject detail: the specific whereabouts of a department's books and journals, for example, or details of the Special Collections we have which are most relevant to them. Here's a History of Art example that I used this year with my Postgraduates.

As Prezi users will know, the order in which your presentation visits the various elements on the canvas is known as the 'Path'. It's easy to take things out of your path WITHOUT taking them out of your presentation - meaning you can deliver a talk for whatever time-slot you have, but when you give people the link the presentation afterwards they can see the full version with much more detail left in.

So for me, the ability to take a floor-plan PDF and make it interactive, the ability to contextualise our YouTube videos, and the ability to make copies of the map which we customise for each department and presentation length, are all good reasons to justify using Prezi.

If you want to take your own floor-plans and turn them into interactive maps, it's really not that complicated - I've written a guide to that here. Student feedback is great so it's worth doing - also, we often get academics giving us very good feedback and starting conversations about it, so it's a chance to boost our credibility in departments more generally.

2. Presentations with a focus on visual content

Another History of Art example here - the presentation I use for a session on Finding Images with my HoA 1st years. Because it's all about imagery, a very visual presentation makes sense. It also helps to make some of the tedious step-by-step instructions I have to cover slightly more engaging. I don't know why but I quite like the 70s wallpaper aesthetic of this Prezi template, too.

3. Presentations on several disparate subjects

The final reason I use Prezi is when covering lots of different topics or tools under one umbrella. When doing a presentation or teaching session on one topic or idea, the linear nature of PowerPoint suits this well. But when covering lots of things, it can be helpful to show the audience all of them at first, then visit each of them one by one. For a session for academics on online tools and technologies, there's not much linking the content except everything is online - for that the Prezi helps make sense of the broader context.

For most teaching and most presentations I find PowerPoint is fine - it's also much maligned of course, but when used well it can be very effective. For me it's never a case of tossing a coin as to which one to choose - unless there's a compelling reason to use Prezi, why risk the audience feeling sea-sick?

That said, when there IS a compelling reason to choose it, it make a huge difference to the level of engagement. People literally sit up in their seats and take notice. And if you always keep the audience in mind, and use Prezi to deliver your message effectively rather than show off, it will work.

In terms of accessibility, Prezi does provide a transcript of each presentation but I'm not sure that would be much of a recreation of actually watching the presentation, so we don't provide any information only in Prezi. In the Finding Images presentation above, for example, there's nothing in it which isn't also in the hand-out I give the students.

Here's a specific post on how NOT to make your audience feel sick, if you want more detail on that. If you've had successes or failures in using Prezi in academic libraries that you'd be willing to share, leave me a comment below.

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How the terrible fonts on my website led me to New Zealand...

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Every so often I will search twitter for the URL of this website. I recommend doing this - you can see what people are saying when they link to your site, what people respond most to, sometimes what they don't like. Occasionally I'll reply with more information if appropriate.

Maybe twice a year I'll run a similar search for www.librarymarketingtoolkit.com, and it was doing this that led me to discover the following tweet:

LIANZA is the Association for Library and Information Professionals in New Zealand. I replied to say 'you don't like the font..?' and someone else joined to say how much they ALSO didn't like the font! I got some useful feedback on the font you're looking at now on this site, too - so thanks to Seonaid, they've since been tweaked! And the Toolkit website was completely overhauled in terms of visual style, as a result of that chat.

Anyhow, Ines on the LIANZA account and I got talking, which resulted in this:

(I've mentioned before that although I work part time and make part of my living through workshops, I don't ask money for conference talks apart from expenses.) This led to an email exchange and to cut a long story short (is that the most misused phrase ever? I've basically let the long story run its course here, apologies...) I'm delivering a keynote at the annual LIANZA conference in November. I'm more excited about it than possibly anything I've ever done professionally! I will be setting out a library communication manifesto in my talk.

The other keynotes include Justin Hoenke, who I can't wait to meet in person after we worked together on Buy India a Library. I also can't wait to hear Kim Tairi speak. The whole programme looks ace. I also get to be a 'human book' which I've not done before...

For anyone interested I gush a bit more about NZ in an interview for LIANZA's Library Life magazine (PDF).

Digital Marketing Workshop, Wellington, November 12th

While I'm out there I'm also running a workshop for PiCS, for whom I also run workshops in Australia every two years. If you're interested there's more info including booking here.

It's a really fun course - we dip into absolutely loads of tools which help libraries (and library services) communicate. Every single thing we cover is useful - they solve existing problems - relatively straightforward to use, free, and immediately available. This is not about the future of libraries or tech just on the horizon. It's about things you can do the minute you get back to your desk.

We'll cover online publishing (including Prezi and Sway), Geolocation and Augmented Reality, Marketing with Video, Measuring Impact on Social Media, and various other smaller topics.

Some feedback from recent UK versions of this course:

“ “Very up to date - thanks - very useful, practical and relevant course - I’m brimming with ideas”

”So much of it was useful... really easy tools to use and could results in some quick wins for us. Tips on blogging were useful too and hopefully will inspire us to actually start one. Augmented reality bit was fascinating - lots of potential there”

”I thought this course was excellent, one of the best courses I have attended at the BL... ALL the content was useful - Ned was excellent in really understanding the BL collections and needs and shaping the course appropriately. I have already recommended this course to colleagues!”

“This has been a fantastic course - I have learnt so much and gained more confidence around a number of digital marketing tools and how to use them effectively. Ned’s knowledge and brilliant presentation style is great and kept me hooked for the whole day. Everything has been amazing” ”
— UKeIG, NHS, British Library

So if you're in New Zealand it would be great to see you there! LIANZA attendees get a reduced rate, too...

 

 

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Library use compared with other things: a snapshot in 2015

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UPDATE: June 2016.

I wrote the post below in August 2015 - I was very excited about the stats showing that, despite the overall decline, the sheer number of library visits compared very well with lots of other activities people in the UK take part in. I used a hyperbolic headline ("Visiting libraries is the most popular activity in the UK") which was designed for maximum impact, but was, in the way of headlines, lacking in nuance. It seems naive, looking back at it, and I flinch a little every time someone tweets it now, nearly a year later.

Part of the reason for this is a that the stats are a snapshot of that time - all the sources of figures, listed in towards the bottom of the post, were the most recent available at the time of writing. Most will have changed since then - including the main library use stat, which was for the 2013-14 financial year. CIPFA posted more up to date figures in December 2015.

So the principle of this I still stand by - comparing library use with other activities is a good way to reframe the story of decline in use. But OBVIOUSLY to be used in any kind of serious way in 2016 and going forward, up to date figures would be required. Also, you'll see below I wrote very specifically: "...no need to attribute anything (except the original data sources)."

The Society of Chief Librarians are using the figures below in some posters they brought out at the recent SCL Horizons event. They chosen not to comply with the my wish above that the original data sources be attributed and they've wilfully ignored the most recent CIPFA figures so have knowingly promoted misleading figures on the grounds that 'the stats would stand for next year'. (What? They're stats for a specifc year. They stand for that year only.)

I feel partially responsible for this because I wanted this stuff to be used and I was delighted so many people shared it when it first came out. I made it CC-0 precisely because I wanted people to take it and run with it (and because I don't 'own' the collation of a series of statistics anyhow). But I feel like the SCL were pretty remiss to reproduce this stuff for their big event (apparently there is great demand for the poster) in 2016 without acknowledging that the figures are for a specific period of time. They've said that the banner was a one off and that the poster version will be corrected and updated - I very much hope this is indeed the case.

I'm always struck by just how many people use libraries in the UK. It's a mind-bogglingly huge amount.

When we hear about the figures they're always couched in terms of reductions - CIPFA tells us about the continuing decline, noting that UK visits to public libraries in 2013-14 fell to 282 million, from 288 million the previous year. I'm not surprised it fell - we lost 49 branches and 1,000 full-time-equivalent staff in the same period.

But why do we never take the figures in isolation? 282 million visits! That's MASSIVE. And then I started wondering how that compared with other things we visit in the UK. I came up with a list of as many as I could think of, and guess what? We visit libraries more than we visit ANYTHING else. In fact, we visit libraries twice as often as we visit football matches, theatres, A&E and the Church combined.

I mean come on!

So inspired by some utter drivel from the Telegraph about a new Government initiative about libraries (more on which another time), I've come up with some different ways of expressing the comparisons between how often we visit libraries versus other things we visit.

Everything below has no licence attached to it so please use it however you wish - tweet it, blog it, embed it, remix it, change it, and no need to attribute anything (except the original data sources). I just want this message to go as far and wide as possible.

Library usage stats broken down into smaller timeframes

I'd be really keen for people to make their own versions of these - I'm sure we can do better than what I've come up with below. This is the perfect size to tweet as it won't need expanding to be viewed on Twitter.

I really like this version from @bookmarkpeople, too:

Here are all the subdivisions if anyone's feeling creative with comparisons:

  • 282 million library visits per year
  • 23.5 million library visits each month
  • 5.423 million library visits per week
  • 772,602 library visits per day
  • 32,191 library visits per hour
  • 536 library visits per minute
  • 8.9 library visits per second. For every second! Of the entire year! I mean seriously, how the hell can people claim we don't need libraries any more?

Library usage stats on Sway

Here's the first version of the stats. It's done using Sway, a new tool from Microsoft. Direct link to the presentation here.

Clicking the button above will allow you to tweet a link to that Sway presentation. I also did a vertical scrolling Sway in a slightly different style - take your pick! Both Sways allow duplication, so if you want to take them as a starting point to make your own version, feel free - improve and enhance it.

Library usage stats on Slideshare

A slightly different approach for this one - a teaser format where the most popular activity isn't revealed until the very end. Here's a link direct to the slides.

The slides were Featured on Slideshare's homepage and also tweeted by the CEO of the Arts Council, so hopefully we're getting beyond the echo-chamber!

Library usage stats on video

Here's a YouTube video - the same statistics as in the slides, but this time made in PowToon.

Library usage stats: the raw figures

Here are all the raw figures I collected - if you take these and do something interesting with them, let me know in a comment and I'll add whatever it is to this list!

230 million library visits in England (282 million in UK): http://www.cipfa.org/about-cipfa/press-office/archived-press-releases/2014-press-releases/cipfa-library-survey

Cinemas: 165.5 million admissions: http://www.cinemauk.org.uk/facts-and-figures/admissions/uk-cinema-admissions-2013-by-region/

Church of England: 52 million visits: https://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/parish-attendance-affiliation.aspx

The UK itself: 32.8 million visits from overseas in 2013: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ott/travel-trends/2013/rpt-travel-trends--2013.html

Theatre: 22 million attendees in 2013: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/11001177/Almost-twice-as-many-people-visit-the-theatre-than-attend-Premier-League-games.html

Hospital A&E Departments: 18.5 million visits http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB16728

Premier League Football: 13.9 million total attendance http://www.espnfc.com/barclays-premier-league/23/statistics/performance?season=2013

There used to be Museums and Galleries figures here, but they turned out to be just for DCMS owned insitutions so I've removed them - thanks to Ian Clark for the heads-up.

Library usage stats: as a Google doc

And finally, if you want to do stuff with the data it may be useful to have it in a spreadsheet: here's a Google doc. It's set to 'anyone can view' - if you want to edit or add to the data etc just make your own copy.

What other people are doing with the stats

The first remix has arrived! Really pleased that Adlib has redone the graphic at the top of this page but for Canadian libraries.

I hope others will be encouraged to take this basic idea and run with it - either by finding new ways to express the information, or finding new information, or redoing some of these resources for different parts of the world...

Spread these messages however you want, as far as you can. And keep the statistics to hand - every time someone says 'we don't need libraries in the digital age' we can respond 'actually 772,000 people in the UK will need them today alone!' and all the rest of it.

Let's do this!

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If you need a conference / event / project website, Strikingly might be the option for you

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The short version of this post is: if you'd like a clean modern website for your online presence, and aren't looking to do anything too complicated, Strikingly may well be the right choice for you. It's easy to use for both author and viewers of the site, and it's free as long as you don't get TOO much traffic.

Over the past couple of months I've been tinkering around with the website builder Strikingly in spare pockets of time.

I really like the vertical scrolling style websites you can make in Strikingly - I first saw that style when Matt Borg used it for stuff like the UXLibs site. You can use normal navigation to skip to whichever page you like, or you can scroll down and they all appear below the homepage - meaning you never have to load up a new page to explore the website. This long-form one-page style saves time and works well.

Where it doesn't work so well is if you have a lot of complicated information to display on many different subjects - in that setting a traditional website may work better. But if you have just one story to tell Strikingly can do it with an uncluttered, stylish, and very mobile friendly site. For example for a conference, an event, a project, a collaboration, or even a personal website to act as a CV or something for the Googlers to find.

I already have this main website made in Squarespace (which I reviewed here), so in order to have a reason to sign up and play with Strikingly in earnest I built a site for my Training offering. You can find it here if you're interested - the top part looks like this:

Click the pic to open the website in a new window

Click the pic to open the website in a new window

At the moment this feels some way ahead of Blogger and even Wordpress in terms of the interface - it's pleasant to interact with a Strikingly site. You can actually blog using Strikingly, but if you do that and achieve success with it, you're going to exceed the 5GB of bandwidth that comes with the free version of the service. You can upgrade to the 8-or-16 dollar a month packages but I doubt anyone reading this would want to that - so to my eyes, Strikingly is a good option for someone who wants an online presence, perhaps to document some projects you've worked on, an online CV, or to showcase your skills if you're job-hunting, but who doesn't want to commit to blogging. Or, as mentioned, for an event, conference or collaborative project.

The editor looks like this:

As you can see you choose the type of section you want, then edit the content to your own. You edit the actual site - so what you see is truly what you get, rather than there being a seperate Editor interface. This makes it easier to see exactly how the changes you make are going to affect your design.

PROS OF STRIKINGLY

  • It's fairly fool-proof in terms of making things look nice. You are set up to succeed and would have to out of your way to make a duff site, even if you have no experience of web design or blog-building etc
  • It's very easy to create a site. There are nice templates which are relatively customisable
  • It's free, as long as your site is not too popular! (See below)
  • It's Responsive Design, so everything about your site is retained when viewing it on mobiles - it's just re-ordered to best fit the size of screen. Below is a screen-grab of Preview mode where you can see your site in tablet or phone view:

CONS OF STRIKINGLY

  • If you exceed 5GB of bandwidth per month, you'll need to upgrade to a paid-for package. There's more on understand bandwidth requirements here but to 5GB ought to be enough unless you're blogging and building an audience. I don't know what my bandwidth usage is anymore as the Squarespace package I have is unlimited, but in my old wordpress days I used between 10 and 20GB a month - had I not been blogging and thus creating traffic I think 5GB would have been more than enough
  • You need a lot of imagery. As with all modern website designs, it's a lot about pictures - so you'll have to use some. There's plenty of inbuilt options to choose from but in making mine I had to hunt around for things which were relevant, and not just stylish for the sake of it
  • Following on from that, all these new website builders (like Squarespace too) are really aimed primarily at start-ups and freelancers; sometimes it feels like an effort to find the options which aren't all about a: the hard sell or b: vaguely trendy lifestyle stuff that may work in a San Franciso web design office but is hard to imagine having any meaning elsewhere
  • It's not THAT flexible - as mentioned above, a more complicated site is better off with a different website builder. The editor is easy to use but a little constraining so you can't micromanage the finer details of how each section is arranged
  • And the usual disclaimer as with any new site-builder - who knows how long the company will be around? Unlike Wordpress which is open-source and sustained by the non-profit community, Strikingly exists as a business, and businesses go under... There's no reason to expect Strikingly to stop existing, but you never know.

So could Strikingly work for you or an enterprise you're involved with? If you do decide to give it a whirl let me know what you make with it.