Creating a UX-Focused Website at Chapel Hill Public Library
By Susan Brown
Susan Brown, director of the Chapel Hill Public Library in North Carolina, tells the story of how she and her staff worked with a user experience (UX) firm to develop a more patron-centric website. As it turned out, going through that grant-funded process didn’t affect just the website. The lessons of UX seeped into CHPL’s culture, leading them to adopt a new mission statement, a set of organizational values, a service pledge, and a whole new mindset.

How-to

VCU Libraries Runs Campaign Encouraging Students to #VetYourSources
By Laura W. Gariepy and Sue Robinson
This spring at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Libraries, the PR director worked with the head of teaching, learning, and information to run a campaign against the “fake news” phenomenon. Originally aimed at students on social media with the hashtag #vetyoursources, it spread into real life with a successful symposium that brought faculty members and librarians together to discuss how to critically assess information. The social campaign will continue this fall, and the authors invite you to join VCU’s efforts.

Special Report

PR Meets Politics at ALA 2017
By Kathy Dempsey
MLS editor Kathy Dempsey attended the ALA Annual Conference in June, and she shares summaries of the marketing-related sessions she saw. This report covers the latest on advocacy at the federal level, gaining power to build stronger communities, and increasing support from stakeholders. Dempsey also attended the PR Xchange and its awards ceremony, as well as the John Cotton Dana Awards gala. The political side of the conference was capped off when Hillary Clinton spoke at the Closing General Session.

Getting Feedback From Patrons via Surveys
In this issue, techie and tool lover Jennifer E. Burke looks at platforms for online surveys. She compares seven lesser-known tools with the popular SurveyMonkey. A helpful chart compares the free versions of all eight tools, so you can see at a glance how many questions and responses each one offers, which ones allow you to export data, and more. It also reveals the starting prices of their paid plans, should you choose to go that route.

Marketing and Outreach for the Academic Library: New Approaches and Initiatives
Edited by Bradford Lee Eden
Kathy Dempsey offers a short review of this 2016 compilation of contributed chapters from Rowman & Littlefield. While she says it has “nothing new under the sun,” she acknowledges that it can be useful for those who “want to see how their peers are tying outreach into others parts of their overall work.”

Announcement of keynote speakers for the Library Marketing and Communications Conference this November
Also in the news: a collection of info on federal advocacy strategies, a new ALA pilot project called Media Literacy @ Your Library, a paper by Scott Walter on the value of academic libraries, and ALA commits to continue the Libraries Transform campaign for 3 more years.