Wake me up before you go-go to the local library!

This was just one of our initiatives to get local residents to join the library. Opening the doors of Finsbury Library at 7am in the morning to welcome early morning voters in the London Mayoral elections with free tea and coffee and an opportunity to use and join the library that was being used as a Polling station resulted in 50 new members.

Getting out on a Saturday in the two biggest shopping centres where staff engaged with local residents proved popular. Staff talked to shoppers about their local library service and handed out membership forms with a unique code so that we can evaluate the activity.

Alongside this we undertook a number of local recruitment drives where staff went out onto the local streets near the library to encourage people to join. Some newsagents gave permission for our own local library leaflet to be inserted into the Mirror on the day the national promotion appeared.

The press attention was good with both local papers covering the Join a library day as well as coverage in the Residents magazine. Further press coverage will appear in a magazine that is sent out to all council tenants and all residents in the EC1 area.

And we kicked the whole programme off in March for World Book day where we encouraged users to join up a friend with the opportunity to win one of two iPods (for which, no doubt, they will use to listen to Wham’s Greatest Hits!).

The results of all this targeted recruitment were a huge increase in new membership in April. An impressive increase of 67%!

So what next?

  • With a new partnership with Borders where local residents can vote for their favourite book and win the top 25 will bring a lot of additional people through our doors, as libraries will double up as polling stations.
  • Establishment of a short term community library on one of our estates which will provide a link for people to using their local library
  • Targeting commuters at bus stops with posters at all the 200 bus stops in the borough with incentives to join their local library. This will also be accompanied by leafleting of underground stations by staff before 9am and after 5pm.
  • Developing a partnership with the local branch of UNISON where they will mailshot all their union members encouraging them to join the library with prizes for new members and existing members.