This first 2024 issue is packed with lessons from your experienced peers. There’s so much to learn about! The cover story and the how-to are both written by John Cotton Dana Award winners whose projects and processes are well worth emulating. Then there are brief reports about two different marketing conferences: one in the U.S. and one in Canada. Finally, there’s an interview with advice from a Floridian marketer who’s been in the game for more than 30 years.

Plus, a happy announcement: The popular Interviews With Marketing Masters column will appear in every issue of MLS this year! We decided that having it in every other issue just wasn’t enough; there are too many great library promoters out there with too much useful info to share. So stay tuned for more.

Examples to Emulate

Show Your Library Card and Save: Mesa Partners With Small Businesses
By Sara Lipich
One way to highlight the money-saving power of library cards is to enable people to save even more money with them. Marketers at Mesa Public Library (MPL) in Arizona did just that. To recover from a 4-year “freefall” in the number of cardholders, Sara Lipich and Veronica Coronado set up a 2022 Library Card Sign-Up Month campaign in which local businesses agreed to offer discounts to customers who showed their cards during September. The result? By spending just $645, MPL gained more than 3,200 cardholders and won a John Cotton Dana Award. And that was just the first year.

How-To

Creating Meaningful Programs Using an Outcomes-Based Framework
By Kelly Sitzman
Continuing her story from the September/October 2023 issue, Kelly Sitzman writes about how a reorganization at Pioneer Library System led to major changes in program planning. By adopting an outcomes-based system, staffers streamlined and standardized the focus of programs across the 12-branch, three-county Oklahoma system. This enabled more strategic, more successful program promotion and ensured that residents’ needs were met in measurable ways.

Interviews With Marketing Masters

Chris Boivin Uses Earned Media to Help Jacksonville Soar
By Judith Gibbons
Chris Boivin has been using his M.B.A. and his 30 years of marketing and communications experience to win a contest, to reach new audiences with both paid and free technology, and to build valuable media relationships. He shares lessons he’s learned along the way for crisis communications, confidence-building, and more.

Special Report

LMCC Expanded Its Offerings in 2023
By Kathy Dempsey
The Library Marketing and Communications Conference convened for the ninth time in November 2023. Indianapolis hosted the specialized event, which offered one pre-conference, two riveting keynotes, and 32 sessions across 3 days. For the first time, sponsoring vendors had tables on-site so attendees could talk with them directly. As always, the networking time was plentiful and valuable.

Special Report

Thoughts From OLA’s Marketing Think Tank
By Kathy Dempsey
The Ontario Library Association hosted a 1-day virtual conference, the Marketing Libraries Think Tank (MLTT), on Nov. 21, 2023. Even with just six sessions, the event managed to cover a broad range of MarCom topics and to draw three sponsors and more than 100 attendees. In one especially interesting session, a TED Talk speaker teamed with a registered psychotherapist to discuss the mental health issues surrounding social media.