How to promote online resources to schools, parents and children.
Having different online resources in libraries is great. But how do you help generate a buzz around the new resource in a quick and easy manner?
Here are some ideas to help:
- Hand out the bookmarks, flyers, or other material you have whenever a book is borrowed by a child or parent.
- If your library is doing school visits, hand out these materials while at the school.
- Run competitions on one particular resource to promote its use. This is often really powerful to get the interest going. An example is the Ziptales “Read a Story, fill in a worksheet” competition which creates interest for both the child and their parent / guardian.
- Make sure all the librarians know about the resource and have used it. Logging into a resource even just once can make a BIG difference. We recommend having librarians dedicate 10 minutes in their week to logging in and having a look.
- Posting in various mother and father forums or blogs.
- If possible, have each librarian post on social media a recent example of working with a library user.
- Display your resources on your TV monitors and even computer screen savers.
- Include the resources as part of newsletters or emails.
- If the resource has printable items, such as the worksheets in Ziptales, or the Make and Do activities (such as Ziptales’ make a kite, magic tricks etc), you can print these and make them readily available for children or parents to pick up and use.
