To your left, check out a trading card I created at Big Huge Labs (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/). Now, this, I can see the potential of. Or is that: Of this, I can see potential? In any case, this website rocks with tons of fun ways to manipulate your digital images. Now, I'm sad to say it's a well-known secret that librarians are horrible horrible horrible at marketing. It's just not a skill-set that comes with the job. Librarians are great at doing. They are not so great at telling people what it is, exactly, that they do. Case in point: years ago I worked on a family literacy project collaboration between my library school and a local branch. Oh, we were amazing. We had Head Start involved, ECFE, crafts, themes, in-depth analysis of the targeted demographic--the pedagological stars were all aligned. I was dazzled by our program. Session arrives and we're all beyond excited. And what happened? No one came. That's right, friends. We had forgotten, for the most part, to tell anyone about it. Oh, there were other issues there--a last minute change of venue and such, but in all our excitement we had left out marketing. And this is how I learned that all library schools should include a "Marketing Your Library Services" among its core curriculum. My point, in retelling this sad little tale, is that Big Huge Labs makes marketing SO easy for graphic design-challenged librarians, of which there are many. There are no longer any excuses. I created this trading card in 5 minutes. Imagine one for each of your staff (like Carleton College, bless their hearts). Imagine one for each of your work-study. Oh! You could do trading cards for staff picks of books. At the site you can also make movie posters (I'm definitely going to fool around with that), mosiacs, magazine covers. Tons of fun stuff. And, unlike Flickr, which I saw as only useful for certain types of libraries, I see image generating tools as being useful for all libraries, regardless of type. They make it easy. It's really fun! Go on, try it. I double-dog dare you.
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Another thing librarians are horrible at, apparently, is creating really catchy titles for their blog posts.
3 comments:
You gave me an excuse to look up the exact wording of a favorite quote, which I then found at Churchihll on Prepositions:
"Supposedly an editor had clumsily rearranged one of Churchill’s sentences to avoid ending it in a preposition,
and the Prime Minister, very proud of his style, scribbled this note in reply:
'This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.'
"The Oxford Companion to the English Language states that the original was 'This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.' "
That might be a handy slogan for marketing libraries:
"Budget cuts? This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which we will not put."
Etc.
P.S. Things I am bad at: proofreading. Which is funny, since I am sometimes paid actual money for doing it... (Maybe that's the problem--I don't like to proof my own writing, since no one pays me for it.)
Anyway, that should of course be "Churchill on Prepositions," as in Winston Churchill.
P.P.S. Who is that funny Well Dressed Librarian? Someone you know???
Are those your kids? They are adorable!
I need to play around with the online image generators much more. If it's that quick and easy, I really should have the time to do it.
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