I put this list together for the UHLS/MVLS summer reading planning workshop and was asked to share it with other library systems in NY. Hope it’s useful to others as well.
Promoting Your Summer Reading Program Online
Public Service Announcements
- Use the CSLP public service announcement videos on your web site. See if your community partners will put them on their web site as well.
Events Calendars
- Add your events to local online events calendars and other general events calendars (eg: eventful.com) Ask your patrons what online calendars are popular in your community.
flickr – pictures, pictures, pictures!
Photos tell stories! Take lots of photos of your planning ideas and events and use flickr to easily add your photos to your website and blogs.
Upload your photos to flickr.com for an easy way to store and share them. Basic flickr accounts are free. Pro accounts are $25/year. Techsoup.org has partnered with flickr to offer free Pro accounts to qualifying non-profits.
- Easy photo resizing — flickr resizes all uploaded photos. Use the resized photos on your websites and blogs.
- Easy slide shows — Use flickr’s badge feature to create a slideshow of your SRP photos to put on web site or blog, it’s as easy as copy and paste
- More slide show options — Use other 3rd party tools to create slide shows
- Share with the world — Join the Summer Reading 2008 flickr group and share your photos with librarians around the world.
- Tag your pics — Use the tags srp08, summerreading to bring your photos to the attention of more people
- Blog it fast! — Send your photos directly from flickr to your blog. Look for the “blog this” button at the top of each photo.
Blog it
- Talk it up on your blog and use lots of photos. Short postings are more readable.
- Don’t have a blog? Try wordpress.com or blogger.com – both free and easy.
- You could have a blog just for your summer reading program and link to it from your website.
Videos
- Take videos during events, upload them to YouTube, blip.tv. Then put them on your web site or blog. Easy copy and paste.
- Hold a video contest – let kids and teens create videos about books and reading and summer and fun and gaming and whatever else is going on in your library.
- Make a video from your photos – animoto.com is a fun tool for creating short videos from photos.
Podcasts
- Get your teens to produce some short promos for the summer reading program. Make them available to your local press.
- Use a service like podcastpeople.com to record and store your podcasts in one easy step.
- Book talks, promos for events, a summer reading news podcast, teen podcast zine …..
Put it all on your blog and web site
- All of this great content can be ‘recycled’ and put on your web site or blog. Most services provide you with a simple copy and paste code to embed the content on your web pages.
- Let your local schools and other community partners know about your videos, podcasts, photos and blogs. They can easily include your content on their web pages too.
If you’re in New York State, let the New York State Library know what cool stuff you’re doing and we’ll put it on the NY Statewide Summer Reading web site. You can contact me at polly at pafa dot net
