Three weeks into a pilot campaign aimed at moving OCLC's 2008 study From Awareness to Funding from theory to practice, OCLC hosted a session July 11 to talk about where the study has taken them since its publication one year ago and to discuss their new campaign: Geek the Library.
The purpose of Geek the Library is to show what Awareness calls “Probable Supporters,” or regular voters who are likely to vote in favor of library funding, how the library can engage them in their interests and create a transformational experience. The call to action? Get you geek on. Geek the library. Show your support.
“Geeking” something is simply showing nerd-level passion. It's cool to geek. The idea of the campaign is that whatever people geek, the library can engage them in that passion.
OCLC's 2008 study showed that voters who perceive the library as a “transformational” force and not just an “informational” source are most likely to vote in support.
Of course, amid a global economic crisis where city budgets are being cut nationwide, voter support is more important now than ever. “As we all know, the world changed after we did this [2008] research,” said OCLC Vice President for the Americas and Global Vice President of Marketing Cathy De Rosa. What researchers at Leo Burnett found in a follow-up to the Awareness study was that people feel the future is uncertain and that the important behavioral shift has shown that people have moved from a “trade-up” to a “trade-off” mindset. This finding, while bad news for most of Leo Burnett's high-profile clients, is good news for libraries. Leo Burnett's follow-up study also showed a renewed focus among Americans on self-reliance, “almost to an early-American level” said De Rosa.
De Rosa suggested the findings of this year's followup study only enhance those of last year's. As people “trade off” luxuries for necessities, libraries see an increase in usage.
But moving the study from theory to practice took some action. “You can't just take the words 'information to transformation' and apply them to libraries without some sort of campaign,” said OCLC Director of Branding and Marketing Services Jenny Johnson. The campaign aims to activate probable supporters' “latent love” for libraries.
Geek the Library, a field campaign in southern Georgia and central Iowa covering 80 libraries and 1.1 million people, has four goals: to increase awareness for library funding, to change perceptions and attitudes of probable supporters and elected officials, to measure the potential to help lead to a reverse in the downward trend in library funding in the U.S., and to provide materials and learning to the public library community at no charge.
OCLC plans to report on the findings of this field study in March 2010.
