(11 Apr 2019) The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and Gale, a Cengage company, have collaborated to create the ACRL Libraries Transform Toolkit. This free new toolkit provides academic and research libraries with easy-to-use tools and resources to develop effective marketing and outreach strategies to promote their services and impact to students, faculty and administrators. The toolkit extends the American Library Association’s (ALA) Libraries Transform Campaign, that’s designed to increase public awareness of the value, impact and services provided by libraries and library professionals.
“We created this toolkit in response to an evaluation we conducted with academic libraries on marketing and outreach activities, where they expressed a need for access to easy-to-use, outreach best practices and materials that are flexible and adaptable. In addition, the toolkit also allows for materials to be uploaded and shared as part of each section, so that everyone can contribute to its content,” said Cinthya Ippoliti, chair of the ACRL Libraries Transform Task Force. “The toolkit provides academic libraries with the guidance needed to develop, execute and measure their community engagement efforts alongside their strategic marketing plans.”
Key resources in the ACRL Libraries Transform Toolkit include:
- Marketing Instructional Materials: Foundational guidance on how to create a marketing strategy, define message positioning by target audience, and plan campaigns.
- “Because” Statement Templates: Designed to help libraries develop messaging statements to promote their services and resources or issues of importance. Example statements are provided as well as ALA’s formula where libraries can create their own.
- Community Engagement Framework: Provides a framework and tactics to develop, support and sustain effective community outreach and communication strategies.
- Methods for Communicating and Measuring Impact: Provides insight and best practices on analyzing, measuring and communicating library outreach strategy results.
“Academic libraries play an important role in supporting student success and connecting researchers to new insights and ideas, but they often lack the staff, time and money it takes to promote their resources to these audiences.” said Harmony Faust, vice president of marketing and communications at Gale. “Our mission is to connect libraries to learners, and we are proud that our close collaboration with ACRL makes such a valuable marketing toolkit available to help our libraries more efficiently and effectively create awareness of the value and impact they bring to the communities they serve.”
To access the toolkit, visit the ACRL Libraries Transform Toolkit webpage.
The original press release is here.
