I am excited to announce that Ask a Librarian is holding its 2nd Annual Ask a Librarian Day on Tuesday, February 23rd. We will be providing buttons to every librarian who staffs Ask a Librarian at your library to wear. We are also planning to send out a press release and to generate publicity for the service.
What should you do? Spread the word about Ask a Librarian Day and create a local event to correspond with the statewide day. Some ideas from last year included: Ask a Librarian Booth at the library, posters, raffles, contests for students asking questions that day, handing out bookmarks at checkout and just talking about the service to everyone you meet. If you still have your t-shirt from last year, I encourage you to wear it as well
The purpose of AAL Day is to raise awareness about the service within the library and to your users. We have found librarians and staff not actively involved with Ask a Librarian are not familiar with the service. So, as part of AAL Day talk to your co-workers, everyone from the director to the part-time clerks should know the following about Ask a Librarian and be able to share this information with users:
• If you ever need help when you’re not in our library, visit askalibrarian.org (or find the link on our library’s website).
• Ask a Librarian is a website where you can go to get your questions answered by a real librarian.
• Ask a Librarian is open until midnight ET Sunday through Thursday and until 5 p.m. ET Friday and Saturday.
• You can use Ask a Librarian for free.
• If Ask a Librarian isn’t open for chat, you can always email your question to us, and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours.
To prepare for AAL Day, you might consider ordering new marketing materials at https://info.askalibrarian.org/promotional.asp. We will be sending additional information about AAL Day soon!
Please let me know if you have any questions.