Our Community Engagement Platform is a marketing automation tool that drives patron interaction and allows libraries to develop meaningful messaging from one consolidated platform. CEP also offers analytics tools to help staff members track attendance, create target demographics, and measure their marketing efforts.

Libraries have long been trusted sources for reliable health information. In recent years, partnerships with public health nurses and social workers have brought preventative healthcare and behavioral health referrals into the library, along with connections to fresh food and exercise programming. Learn how recent innovations are going even further, addressing mental health—even loaning lamps to fight Seasonal Affective Disorder—piloting telehealth to allow patrons without reliable home internet to consult medical professionals in privacy, and even providing COVID tests and connecting patrons to vaccines. What are the next steps for libraries to leverage their role as trusted, stigma-free, and private sites to improve patron’s access to healthcare, and how can partnerships ensure that this doesn’t become yet another “other duty as assigned” for overburdened library workers?

In this session, you are encouraged to reflect on open access afresh, whether you are convinced or skeptical or somewhere in between. It’s growing, by what is it and how and where and why is it growing? What is the impact of open access on the availability and quality of information, and is that a good or bad thing?

Anaheim Public Library is receiving the 2021 Power of Libraries award due to their inspiring work with the “We’re Here for You” library card. With the We’re Here for You library card, youth ages 18 and below in the foster care system, a group home, temporary living situation, homeless, emancipated minors, or those with no proof of address will have special access to library resources. The We’re Here for You card allows youth to check out up to 5 items (5 books or up to 3 books and 2 DVDs), eliminates overdue fees and provides assistance with lost items, automatically renews books and materials twice, and offers full access to digital resources

As library leaders explore new ways to serve their communities during later-stage COVID, many places are in real crisis while society is in turmoil. Old modes of library advocacy and storytelling need to be questioned, reconsidered, or even abandoned. Our messages about the value and importance of our work need to be reworked in order to be relevant to new audiences. Even our assumptions about how libraries and library work are perceived need to be considered again. Join EveryLibrary’s executive director John Chrastka for a discussion about how new political realities are impacting libraries and learn what can be done to continue to anticipate success.

Join library marketing expert Cordelia Anderson for a look at the ways that libraries get, keep, and sometimes lose customers. Cordelia will introduce the concept of the “marketing funnel,” talk about the stages of the funnel, and explain how customers move through the funnel. She’ll also explain some of the problems that cause libraries to lose customers, and strategies that we can use to fix them.

Marshall Breeding will give an overview of the major trends currently at play in libraries. How are libraries shaping their services to the changes in society and in information dissemination? What are some of the technology and industry trends driving the development of tech products and services for libraries?

With their disruptive nature, emerging technologies can elicit feelings of both fear and excitement. Our speaker shares strategies and tips for first identifying, then incorporating new technologies into a library setting to provide your community with critical access and program/service opportunities.

Allister Chang will share lessons learned from recent efforts by Libraries Without Borders to extend public library services to spaces that meet people where they are, such as laundromats and manufactured housing communities.

As librarians and library staff, we’re all very passionate about our work and roles in the community. Is it possible for those who we serve to be as passionate about us as we are about serving them? If so, it may very well start with how, when, where and to whom we talk about ourselves and invest our time. Listen in and learn about the Forsyth County Public Library’s marketing efforts that they hope will help get their team and talent a seat at the table.