OLA Super Conference PR Presentation

I had the great opportunity for about the 20th year in a row of presenting at the OLA Super Conference in Toronto.

The first presentation – well you had to be there.  I interviewed a group of newcomers to Canada about their immigration experience and how libraries could have helped.  They were awesome.  We also had a great introduction from the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration about their services but the newcomers were just awesome and shared openly.  I love this series that we’ve been doing for years to bring the voice of the user into the library conference.  In the past I’ve interviewed – sort of a public focus group – which ends with great questions from the audience – panels of teens, seniors, college studients, and people with different abililties.  They’re always standing room only and we learn a lot.

Anyway, my other presentation was about public relations for libraries and tools for same.  My theme was to stop framing the task as public relations.  We’re talking essentially about influence here and I presented on influencing strategies for getting people into our programs and libraries – virtually and in person.  A secondary theme was choosing to target niches of users and not just ‘everyone’ – especially underserved populations like males or adding dimension to user groups like new moms, storytimes, or teens.   I hope it was fun, at least folks laughed at my jokes.

Ontario libraries are making great progress!

Cheers,

Stephen