Getting the Word Out

As I thought about a title for this post, "Dancing in the Street" by David Bowie & Mick Jagger came to mind.   Being a kid in the 80's was the best!  I'm not dancing in the streets, but I am getting the word out in the streets about what is going on in our library.

My first line of communication is our school newsletter.  In our school newsletter, I share announcements about upcoming library events, research projects that involve the library, digital literacy articles from the internet and pictures of our students participating in library events & research.  Our school newsletter creator is awesome and always saves a spot for my library news.  I usually post the same information for the school newsletter to the announcement page on our school library website.  The school library website has been a great tool for sharing pictures, videos and library news.  I can easily update the home page with whatever information I want to feature at that time.

I send my principal and assistant principals quarterly reports sharing what we've been up to in the library.  I also send them an annual report.  I follow a basic format for all of my reports: program highlights, library statistics and information about collaborative projects.  If time permits, I include pictures and videos to help illustrate the data.  I also make the reports available on our school library website.  I share the link with parents in our school newsletter and the library website announcement page each time I add a new report.

In the past, I created a document with lots of information for my annual report.  This year I wanted to create an infographic after media specialist Fran Bullington shared how to do this on her blog Informania.  I tried Piktochart and it was pretty easy to figure out.  Thanks for sharing this great idea, Fran!!

Here is my annual report for 2012-2013 that I created using Piktochart:

I also help post information to our school Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts.  I like to post lots of "reading is important" type posts on these accounts, along with the usual school announcements.

I think sharing what we do in the library is important.  It does not take much time for me to put together a report because I keep track of everything on my calendars.  I pull library stats from the library circulation system.  I keep pictures filed by month.  I just have to make the commitment to sit down once a quarter for 30-45 minutes to put it all together and send it out to my various outlets.

Everyone in my school is supportive of our library program, but I still want to advocate for myself and what starts in the library.

How do you get the word out about what happens in your library?