1. Planning & selecting activities for a library awareness week : Some tips! FOLIO ProMISe Course December 2008

2. Tip 1: Plan in advance Spend as much time as possible beforehand planning your awareness week. The more time you spend planning, the easier the actual week will be. You can never have too much time!

3. Tip 2: What is it for? Before you do anything else, you need to decide what your awareness week is for, as this will help you structure the week and decide what promotion activities to undertake. E.g. is it for…  increasing library membership?  increasing awareness of services?  increasing use of services?  targeting non-users?  etc…

4. Tip 3: Don’t try to do too much! If you try to do too much in your library awareness week it can lead to stress and confusion, both for the library and information service and the users! Don’t try to do every activity possible, select key activities that are suitable for your organisation. Keep it simple as this will make the week more likely to run smoothly.

5. Tip 4: Where you work Pick and choose activities for your library awareness week that are suited to your place of work. Consider:  People - Who are the activities for? Do you want to target particular groups?  Time - How long is the activity going to be? Will people have enough time to attend?  Place - Where are the activities going to be held? Is it a suitable venue?

6. Tip 5: Library and Information Staff When choosing activities for your library awareness week, consider the personalities of the library and information service staff. You need to make sure that the library and information staff feel comfortable being involved in the activities planned.

7. Tip 6: Non-users Try and make your awareness week relevant to the needs of your non-users. If you can find out why people are not using the library (perhaps from a library survey), then you can tailor activities to attract them to the service. This is difficult to do, but it will be worthwhile as you will be increasing awareness and hopefully use of the library!

8. Tip 7: Freebies “Freebies” always go down a treat, if you have funds to buy some. You’ll be surprised how many people will visit the library to get a free pen! However, it is important to consider whether your “freebie” is appropriate - for example sweets may not be approved of by dieticians and dentists.

9. That’s all for now…