Librarian Design Share

We might be surprised by what stands out to our patrons or students about our respective libraries. Sometimes it’s a spot in the building with just the right amount of sunlight and privacy for studying; sometimes it’s a Facebook post that makes them smile; and sometimes it’s just a friendly librarian with an epic beard.

Stacy Taylor, Emerging Technologies Librarian at Adams State University’s Nielson Library, took an aspect (well, person, really) of the library that made a positive impression on students and used it to market the library’s ability to help students. It’s genius, really. Here’s Stacy’s take on this outreach effort:

Our Learning and Engagement Librarian has a very impressive beard and I noticed that students were asking for that guy with the beard or the librarian with the beard. So I created a “That Librarian with the Beard” marketing campaign and put a series of flyers with different questions all over campus. I plan to continue it this fall with questions new students frequently ask, like “Does the library have my textbook?” or “What time does the library close?” The best part is that about 2 weeks after the posters went up a student walked into his office and asked if he was the guy with the beard who could help fix her Word document.

I love the idea of taking common student questions (and perhaps some not so common ones) and using them to encourage students to meet with librarians. I can even see using this approach independent of the bearded librarian meme (although it’s so so much fun).

Details on font choices (because we live for that kind of thing): The questions and hashtag font is Elegant Typewriter, which is used for all Nielson Library marketing materials and branding. The “That Librarian with the Beard” font is Franchise.

You can download and remix (don’t forget to attribute!) the Photoshop PDF files of Stacy’s design from the Librarian Design Share Google Drive flyer folder or contact Stacy directly for details on this brilliant marketing campaign.