Posted on Sept. 12: Put your hooks in books

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/baseball_opt.jpg” caption=”Baseball Library poster”]An innovative marketing campaign for McMaster's campus libraries is using varsity athletes to help make fellow students more aware of the resources available at their library of choice.

Anne Plessl, development officer, Mills Memorial Library, co-ordinated a team of library staff and representatives from the Department of Athletics and Recreation to launch a poster campaign that incorporates varsity athletes and library images to promote the library's collections and services.

“We're using this campaign to promote the library to students in a fun, less traditional way,” says Plessl. “We want to get their attention and generally raise awareness of the library and its resources.”

Staff from the Department of Athletics and Recreation enlisted the help of athletes from a variety of sports. In one poster, a female basketball player shoots for a basket amid the library stacks, under the caption “shoot for A's @ your library.” In another, a duo of football players at a reference desk are ready to “tackle assignments @your library.” Other posters feature baseball, fencing, swimming, track, volleyball, and wrestling. Shooting took place over the summer, with students volunteering about an hour of their time to work with Hamilton-based photographer, Scott Gardner.

Click here for a slide show presentation of the poster series.

The images — eight in all — will be displayed at various campus locations, including Mills, Innis and Thode libraries. They are also being played on the Mactron for the season's first three home football games, and will appear as screensavers on all public access computers in the libraries.

“It isn't often that the library is associated with football, but having our campaign run on the Mactron during games is a great way for us to reach a lot of students at once,” says Plessl. “Athletics and Recreation places a high value on their student-athletes' academic performance, and this is another way for the athletes to act as role models.”

Plessl says the campaign's timing is perfect because it coincides with a rising student population that will need to learn to use the library in its first year. She hopes the campaign will prompt more students to take advantage of library services such as instruction sessions given by librarians at the beginning of each term, which teach students how to find and use the best available resources.

“Ultimately if we get across the idea that the library should be the starting point for students doing research for assignments or papers, then this campaign will have been a success,” says Plessl. “As one of American Library Association's campaign slogans puts it, 'the ultimate search engine is @ your library.'”

The “@your library” tagline is a branded campaign launched in the United States by the American Library Association to promote the value of libraries and librarians.