The story is a familiar one: a librarian goes to a conference, gets excited about a session, then comes back to reality.

In this story, reality turned into a happy ending after Eva Fischer, Campbellton Centennial Library's Head of Reference Services, saw LibraryAware at an APLA (Atlantic Provinces Library Association) conference. Fischer, "very excited" after the presentation, came back and told director Jocelyn Paquette about it. Paquette, already a NoveList fan, was immediately intrigued.

Reality Check (the 'Before')

Of the five Central Resource libraries in the New Brunswick Public Libraries Service, Campbellton is the smallest, with a population of less than 7,000. Close to Quebec, they serve a diverse community, providing programming and outreach -- from partnering with a community garden to hosting a story tent in a low-income neighborhood. "Community partnerships are really important to us," says Paquette. Busy with services, Fischer and her colleagues (7 fulltime, 3 part-time) had a work process that functioned fairly well for them. For example, creating a flyer for a book display using a tool like Publisher was no problem for, staffers like Line, a 9-year library assistant who can, according to Fischer, "make Publisher sing."  However, as many busy librarians can attest, time can be the enemy when it comes to creating promotional materials while simultaneously serving patrons.  

Fast Forward (the 'After')

Paquette realized that her staff became a team after she provided them with a tool that enhances their everyday needs. She credits Fischer with introducing LibraryAware to everyone else, adding, "[Fischer] is our techno-guru. She's totally unafraid. Her attitude was, the way to learn it is to tinker with it: 'OK! This is how it works; who's ready?'"  Paquette said, "Within days, everyone was on board." "It [LibraryAware] belongs to them; that's the thing I've never seen before." 

Even after 5 months Paquette is already seeing what it does for her team.

A More Efficient Team

Fischer appreciates the efficiency with which she can create flyers and posters: "It takes half a day, if that" and she likes being able to edit the same poster on two different computer stations – without interference or worrying about having the latest version. She also enjoys the benefit of vetted images minus the clip art. Paquette believes selecting images is easier than, say, selecting clip art in other software and worrying about copyright. And, "In LA you know that the images are vetted."

Fischer found that LibraryAware helps tap into the effectiveness of using visuals, "Words don't attraction attention, pictures do. It maximizes the whole picture is worth a thousand words thing." She makes frequent use of LibraryAware's poster format.  Paquette is equally enthusiastic about the ability to create a bookmark to give to the community to promote one of their many outreach programs, such as their community garden series. Says Paquette, "We used to have a pamphlet, which would go out-of-date within a short time. Now we have pieces for adults, teens and children that feature what we want to feature each week. LibraryAware lets us do that. It's an absolute joy to have real, professional output."

Creative Power

Library clerk Géraldine Lebel likes that LibraryAware 'broke the barrier," bringing clerks and librarians together. She loves being able to "whip out something new," adding, "Everything is right there – all you have to do is fill in the blanks." Circulation staff can create simple notice posters in minutes. Lebel uses it while at the desk to make posters, saying, "It's awesome to have that much power and create new things."

YA librarian Miriam Chiasson appreciates the ability to create "dynamic things that will be attractive to teens." Paquette has noticed, of the summer reading materials created, "It's the first time we've had kids actually stop and look at the poster. They're actually being attracted to read."

Fischer finds specific functionality helpful, too – for example, she was able to shape their interns' work to create specific flyers for their community gardens program because she could review their work from afar. Also, she likes the Facebook post scheduling feature and is a big fan of the live chat feature from the LibraryAware support team as well: "You get answers right away!"

Flexibility

Chiasson also enjoys its flexibility. When Chiasson showed Paquette a poster she'd created, with text appearing over an image, Paquette didn't feel that the text was visible enough. Chiasson changed it--quickly.  Chiasson said, "It's nice to have that flexibility," adding, "you don't have to be a graphic artist to be able to do this." Social posting, also one of Chiasson's duties, is easier, too. "I appreciate being able to plan our library's social postings. It's all in the same place, which is really helpful."

Future plans

While coaching has worked so far getting most of their crew on board, Fischer would like to take greater advantage of LibraryAware training and also to use the content offered by NoveList's "really nice" readers' advisory tools in future work. She also has plans to create nice display signs for the holidays and to streamline their age group pamphlets.

Says Paquette: "It's the best investment I ever made."

Located 55 miles south of Houston, Brazoria County includes 12 library branches that serve a population of more than 300,000. To promote their collections as well as the library’s programs and services, Brazoria began subscribing to LibraryAware™, a web-based tool that provides newsletters as well as hundreds of professionally designed templates for creating posters, flyers, bookmarks and more.

After sending out email blasts promoting the library’s newest digital resources — Total Boox and Flipster — the number of e-book and magazine downloads rose sharply.

In December 2014, Brazoria County Library System began a new subscription to Total Boox, a service that provides patrons with access to 35,000 e-books. In-house promotion of the service led to 745 downloads in the first month. In mid-January 2015, West uploaded to LibraryAware the email addresses of more than 50,000 patrons and sent out a blast to announce the new service. More than 17,000 people opened the email, representing a nearly 33 percent open rate. When West looked at the number of e-book downloads for the month of January, he was thrilled to see that they had jumped to 7,520, about 10 times higher than the previous month.

“I thought that was really, really good,” West said, adding that a lot of people came into the library to ask about the new service. “It’s really exciting. We’ve noticed a difference right away.”

The success of the first email blast led West to try another campaign in March 2015. The library system had recently added Flipster, EBSCO’s digital magazine service, and he wanted to promote it to patrons. This time the email went out to nearly 54,000 email addresses. More than 13,000 people opened the email, representing a 24 percent open rate. When West checked usage numbers at the end of March, he was pleased again: Flipster saw 2,021 downloads, up from 436 in February.

“It was a very sizeable increase over what we had been doing,” West said. “Flipster was a totally different product, and we needed to get the word out. So we got the word out, and they loved it.”

Learn more about LibraryAware

Located in North Carolina, New Hanover County Public Library includes four branches that serve a population of more than 213,000. To support its readers’ advisory services, the Library subscribes to NoveList Plus, NoveList Select, and LibraryAware.

According to Library Assistant Anna Connelly, NoveList Plus has been an effective tool in supporting the Library’s readers’ advisory service. “Patrons are always really surprised at how quickly we can find a title for them using NoveList Plus,” Connelly says.

In 2013, the institution added NoveList Select, which allows the Library to pull related NoveList Plus content into its existing catalog records. “When I show patrons how to use the catalog, I always show them the related titles on the records, and they are totally in awe of that,” Connelly says. “It’s like having a reference librarian at their fingertips. A lot of patrons who are older don’t like using the online catalog. Sometimes this is a game-changer because they get to see all the great features in the online catalog.”

To better promote its reader services, the institution began subscribing to LibraryAware. “LibraryAware is a great launch pad for readers’ advisory,” says Librarian Carla Sarratt, who edits the bi-monthly African-American Fiction and Nonfiction newsletter. She also edited a recent issue of the monthly Biography and Memoir newsletter to include an infographic highlighting the biographies of key women in politics.

Since sending out “New from Axis 360” newsletters via LibraryAware, New Hanover County Public Library has seen a substantial increase in the number of e-book users, downloads, and holds. In April, the number of downloads were 500 percent higher than those seen in March.

Langlois says LibraryAware is both flexible and versatile.

"We love LibraryAware,” she says. “The single, biggest, awesome, cool thing about LibraryAware is that it gives us a way to create a professional, streamlined look across the board, yet put the creative content capabilities into the hands of the people who are doing the doggone programs. How fun is that? It flows, and it can be reused, and it looks good, and it can be seen in so many different ways. It’s the perfect solution for a smaller library system that has to do its own publicity on a regular basis."

Connelly agrees, praising the synergy among NoveList’s products. “It saves [us] a lot of time with the products being able to talk to each other,” she said. “I wish more companies were as interconnected with their resources.”

Learn more about NoveList Plus, NoveList Select and LibraryAware.

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According to Barry Trott, Digital Services Director at Williamsburg Regional Library, studies show that people still think of books as representing a library’s “brand.” While libraries clearly offer a whole lot more, he said, it is incumbent upon them to deliver the content that their patrons want.

“The library catalog is the place where we encounter our users all the time, even those who never come into the physical building,” Trott explained. “The richer we can make the catalog records, the more likely our users are going to discover something that might be useful to them. That helps keep us relevant in people’s minds."

“Having NoveList content in the catalog through NoveList Select is really crucial to being able to provide readers with good reading ideas,” Trott said.“ It is an important part of how we use the library catalog to build a community of readers.

In 2003, Williamsburg Regional Library began a form-based readers’ advisory service. Users fill out a reader profile online, and the staff responds via email with reading recommendations. Trott said NoveList’s Author Read-alikes feature often provides library staff with ideas.

Williamsburg Regional Library is using LibraryAware to create its weekly email blast to subscribers, and incorporating title lists as a new component of these newsletters. LibraryAware also makes it easy to include library content, both books and e-resources, into promotional and marketing materials.

“I’ve had several readers come up and say that NoveList is a great tool,” Trott said. “When they were looking for one book, they were introduced to other books and authors that they had not been aware of. That’s really what readers’ advisory is all about. By providing people with things that they’re interested in reading and watching and listening to and by helping them to make connections between their current reading and new possibilities, the library remains relevant to its community.

Learn more about NoveList Complete

With nearly $9 million in funding cuts in 2009, Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML) decided to take a focused approach to improving their service and efficiency. The CML team chose to take a new approach to readers’ advisory, utilizing products from NoveList, including NextReads, NoveList Select, and NoveList Plus.

Problems Faced

The CML team often referred to their online catalogue as their ‘24/7 branch.’ “We know not everybody walks up to a desk anymore and asks what they should read,” shares Robin Nesbitt, Director of Technical Services, “but 95,000 cards in our system are used more than once per month.” Serving these ‘power users,’ as well as CML’s growing virtual user audience, was a growing challenge.

In recent years, CML created library newsletters to share readers’ advisory tips, but the effort had become very labor-intensive, keeping 12-15 staff members busy at a time. And newsletter content was often an issue, since many staff members were not well-read in certain genres.

Solutions

CML’s catalogue usage was significant, so utilizing NoveList Select to incorporate readers’ advisory into catalogue records made sense. “Readers’ advisory is critical as we continue to move into a digital future, especially if we want to keep reading alive in this country,” says Nesbitt.

Since implementing NextReads for their readers’ advisory newsletters, CML has saved tremendous time and staff efficiency. What once took 12 to 15 people over a month to create, now takes just 4 or 5 people within a few days. Available staff members have now been reassigned to more strategic roles and responsibilities.

And NoveList Plus has become a trusted resource in all of CML’s branch locations, as well as a valuable tool for virtual users. “With these tools, we can provide readers’ advisory at 3:00 AM, with more robust information than any staff member could remember!” points out Nesbitt. NoveList Plus has also assisted with collection development, pointing out gaps in the library’s collection.

Learn more about NoveList Complete

After launching NoveList Select at their library, Sharron Smith, Manager of Readers' Advisory Services at the Kitchener Public Library, reports that their staff and the public are very pleased with the service:

"Overwhelmingly, the response has been positive and staff are finding that they are using the resources from Novelist much more frequently now that the content is available within our OPAC."

A branch manager at Kitchener expands on the positive impact NoveList Select is having at their library:

"Novelist Select has been an absolute boon to branch staff. Time limitations due to multitasking at the desk (circ, ref, phone, clerical duties) have frequently curtailed customer interaction. But now we have been able to quickly make author or title recommendations, point out series information, all of which has provided a terrific dialogue with customers. They feel it's a wonderful product. Customers have quickly grasped the potential and expressed pleasure in being able to find "something similar" quickly."

As the librarians at the Kitchener Public Library experienced, NoveList Select is a great way to put reading recommendations where readers are most likely to find them--in the OPAC! This will increase visibility and circulation of your entire collection!

Learn more about NoveList Select