Steward’s Corner

There are 4 posts filed in Steward’s Corner (this is page 1 of 1).

Harry Potter Books Find an Adoring Home

Last week, Maggie, one of our neighbors, sent me a note. She said that at her nearby community garden there was a family with a young daughter who was a major Harry Potter fan. Knowing we might be able to help, Maggie wondered if we might have one or two of the books in the series to donate for a surprise??

Earlier this year we had a very successful Harry Potter Extravaganza Week. Leading up to the event we collected several copies of each of the books. Maggie was pleased to hear we had enough left to be able to put together a surprise book package with nearly brand new hardback copies of all 7 books!

a-happy-harry-potter-readerMaggie thanked us heartily for the help and texted us a photo of the young girl (muggle or witch, I can’t tell?!) who’s happily caring for the books now. The whole experience was so heartwarming that I felt selfish not sharing it with all of our generous donors and patrons who not only help keep our neighborhood Little Free Library alive, but who also allow it to support the surrounding communities that are starving for literature as well.

Thanks again everyone!

Social Media Guest Book Instead of a Traditional Guestbook

Disappearing Guest Books

Fortunately, it’s not the case that Little Free Library #8424’s guest book has ever gone missing (though we have replaced the pen frequently), but I was reading through the LFL Steward’s Group on Facebook about what one might do to prevent a Guest Book from disappearing.

There were lots of interesting ideas and suggestions, none of which gave much hope other than to get a new cheap one and give it another try.

To help out other stewards, below I’ll present a few thoughts on something totally different and inexpensive/free that’s also a win-win from a publicity perspective.

The Social Media Guest Book

Rather than having a physical guest book in your Little Free Library, why not use a social media version of a guest book?!

Put up a hashtag for your library and encourage users to take a selfie and post a note to their social media platform of choice (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) If you also include your social media accounts (if any) for your library, they can also tag you so you’ll get a notification about their online “guest book post.”

The benefit of this type of social media guest book is multi-fold:

  • Stewards don’t need to purchase guest books;
  • Stewards don’t need to worry about guest books disappearing with lots of notes and memories;
  • Almost everyone these days has a smartphone and an account on at least one common service;
  • These social media posts will live online for everyone to see;
  • It’s fun (who doesn’t like a good selfie, much less a reason to brag about what you’re reading);
  • And finally, and perhaps most importantly, these social media posts also serve as free publicity to your patron’s friends, family, and neighbors that they stopped by and subtly suggest that other might want to as well.

As an example, I would encourage patrons of Little Free Library #8424 to use the hashtag #LFL8424 and tag @LFL8424 on Twitter (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) with a selfie of themselves, the library, and the book they took along with any note they want to leave.

The reach of their gracious post could also be expanded by the library’s account reposting/retweeting it, which also encourages others in the community to follow suit and participate. (If you have a personal account, you could also like/repost from that account as well as the library’s account.)

Social Media Pro Tips: If you use multiple platforms, try to get the same account name on all of them to make it easier to remember and use regardless of the patron’s platform of choice. Almost all social media sites use some form of hashtag, so just pick one for use everwhere regardless of the platform.

Not a social media ninja or know which sites you might want to use? Take a look at some of the platforms we support here for ideas: A Tiny Library with Its Own Social Media Empire.

Bonus PR Ideas

Libraries could also use social media related ideas like this to do small contests or other giveaways. Perhaps a randomly chosen online post could be chosen monthly for a special give away, or a random post could be selected to choose the book genre/theme for your library’s next takeover?

Little Free Library Guest Book

Little Free Library Guest Book

Another simple, but related idea that we’ve been doing for a while is to feature photos from our traditional guest book on our blog. This way, even if the guest book disappeared, it wouldn’t be a total loss as we have a digital back up.

Do you have a guest book or encourage patrons to engage with your library on social media? I’d love to hear in the comments what you do to encourage participation.

A Library Smaller Than Most Photocopiers

Little Free Library #8424 with a view of Glendale

The First Call

Yesterday, our little free library had it’s first incoming phone call! (Our Google page has us on the map with operating hours and a phone number.) The female caller wanted to make sure we were open on the weekend before she stopped by.

The Second Call

A few minutes later we got another call asking for the library. It was a man who said he was on our street, but couldn’t see the library. Knowing that it’s rather small and not necessarily easy to see coming around the corner in a car, I stepped outside and both verbally and visually (I could see his car) directed him to where it was. As he pulled up, with the woman who turned out to be the first caller, she asked:

Do you have a photocopier?

I did my best not to laugh out loud and explained that we’re just a humble, free neighborhood library and our entire library is smaller than the average photocopier!

We chatted for a moment and I directed her to a few nearby libraries and some local business services that offer photocopying. I’m still chuckling about the experience today…

Publicity Notes for Little Free Library Stewards

I was impressed with the wealth of ideas on the main Little Free Libary site itself (and I notice they’ve totally revamped it on the day I had my grand opening), but have been even more impressed with some of the ideas and posts on the LFL Stewards’ Group on Facebook.

Fortunately I’m in a relatively well-walked neighborhood in a crowded suburb just north of downtown Los Angeles, but I’ve already noticed a small handful of people looking for advice on how to help increase traffic to their libraries. Towards that end, I’ll describe below some things that have already been working for me.

Nextdoor.com

Nextdoor.com is a social media network site for neighborhoods and the people within them – like a mini Facebook for your neighbors. Leading up to, during, and after our grand opening, it was probably the number one driver of traffic for our library in the first two weeks.

Grand Opening

We had what seems to have been the de rigueur grand opening which has helped us out a lot. During the event I met more neighbors in one afternoon than I’ve met in almost five years of living in the neighborhood. It certainly helped to use Nextdoor as mentioned above, but we also had a “soft opening” for the week and a half prior to the grand opening and placed a flier with details about the grand opening on the side.

Taking the time to explain the concept to neighbors in more depth has helped to increase the flow of books through the library since the opening.

Don’t do just one grand opening. It might be worthwhile to do an annual (or even quarterly) open house to invite the neighbors over for cookies and lemonade.

Social Media

As a volunteer, I had the opportunity to build and run social media for the Johns Hopkins University for their first five years in the space, so I’ve had lots of experience both working and consulting in the area. I also have some reasonable web development background, so the first thing I did was to build a website for the library which I’ve tacked onto a subdomain of my own personal site. [http://lfl8424.boffosocko.com]

Then I built up the typical social media presence including: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, and Instagram. I did this so that regardless of what type of platform patrons prefer to use, there will be something for everyone (despite the fact that it might have the effect of spreading out the user base.) I’ll be the first to admit that maintaining a website and 5 or more social media platforms is a LOT! So to help mitigate the workload, I’ve used some back-end “tricks” and mechanics on my website so that it acts as the primary hub for all of them. This way, I can post photos, updates, status updates, or other content directly to the blog and it automatically syndicates the content to all of my social media platforms automatically.

This automatic syndication is just the tip of the iceberg though. Since I’ve seen social media sites come and go (they shut down or get bought out frequently), usually with little or no notice, I know the importance of owning all of my own data. The other half of this is attempting to own all the comments, likes, and other interactions that go along with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other posts. So I’ve also got an infrastructure such that any comments or likes on my syndicated cross-posts to social media get “sucked” back into the library’s main site in the comments section on the associated post. This gives me the benefit of the network effect of the social media platforms without some of the negatives, and also makes the blog for the library look much more “lived in” and used.

I am still working out one or two kinks in the system and streamlining the workflow, but I’m nearly done. I am also spending a bit of time trying to optimize the system and its set up time and minimize the cost, so that others can take advantage of what is all open source software. If others are interested in what I’ve done and doing something similar, I’m happy to help. I am also spending a bit of time trying to optimize the system and its set up time and minimize the cost, so that others can take advantage of what is all open source software.

Local media coverage

Almost every community has their own media coverage whether it’s a major newspaper, a community newspaper, smaller papers distributed at grocery stores (a Penny Saver Press perhaps), or even community blogs or web outlets similar to Patch.com.

Local Libraries

Be sure your local library and librarians know you’re in the neighborhood. They can provide a valuable word of mouth service as well as potentially a source of books (libraries often have donated books or extras that they can’t use or shelve.) It’s likely that they also have a newsletter or bulletin board in which you might place notices. Does the library have a Twitter account or Facebook page? Maybe they’d consider tweeting or retweeting your content. (Nice neighbors do the same in return for them too.)

Neighborhood Associations, Community Groups, Bulletin Boards

Be sure to look around your neighborhood and local community for other ideas. Churches, grocery stores, coffee shops, and other local merchants often have bulletin boards or host notices for nearby events and functions. Have you stopped by the nearby elementary, middle, and high schools to let the administrators know – they may have ideas to help you reach younger readers. Do you have a local neighborhood association (with a website) that can give you newsletter or notice space? Are there any local community organizations with social media presences – retweeting content for each other can be mutually beneficial.

Bookplates and Bookmarks

It’s a longer term idea, particularly as books get passed around within your community, but putting book plates into your books with a name, physical address, and web address can help to be a reminder and garner new visitors. Similarly bookmarks with a nice picture and information about your library can be helpful.

If anyone else has useful promotional ideas to help other libraries get off the ground and increase their patronage, please feel free to share them in the comments below.