Getting to Know Us: Creating a Librarian Profile Video Series

Do students know what librarians do? Or that librarians can be a valuable student resource? And if they don't know this, how can librarians remedy this problem? These were some of the questions a team of librarians at a Florida university sought to answer in the spring of 2016. Collaborating with a public relations campaigns class that accepted the library as their real-world client for the semester, both librarians and PR students discovered that while 73% of surveyed students (at the same university) were unsure of what a subject specialist was, 93% said they would seek out a librarian if they knew they could help with locating scholarly research for an assignment. This indicates that while students may need a librarian's help, they can't seek out assistance if they do not know their subject librarian exists or how they can benefit them. To bridge the gap, the students developed various campaign strategies, one of them being the creation of short, humorous "getting to know you" videos for each subject librarian, highlighting their unique services and expertise. In an effort to bring the student's plan to life, a team of librarians secured internal grant funding to hire a public relations intern and a recent telecommunications graduate for the summer to create a series of engaging librarian profile videos. The videos are now part of a larger campaign to not only raise awareness of library subject specialists, but also show students that librarians can be a valuable academic teammate and an integral resource to tap into throughout their college career. This presentation will focus on the demonstrated need for marketing and promoting librarians rather than the library, in addition to the creative process that went into the planning, creation and editing of the videos. How does one find the right balance between humorous and engaging and informative and educational? The team will talk about the strategic distribution plan that was created to promote and disseminate the videos, as well as the assessment plan for evaluating the reach, effectiveness and impact of the video campaign. Finally, the team will discuss "lessons learned" and plans for future public relations strategies.

Track

Marketing

Speakers

April Hines, University of Florida

Stephanie Birch, University of Florida

Stacey Ewing, University of Florida

Hélène Huet, University of Florida

April Hines is the Journalism and Mass Communications Librarian for the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries.

Stephanie Birch is the African American Studies Librarian for the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries.

Stacey Ewing, associate chair, Library West, and coordinator of InfoCommons@West for the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries

Hélène Huet is the European Studies Librarian for the University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries.


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