Moving Special Collections Out of the Basement - Promotion & Outreach at University of Limerick
1. Moving Special Collections
Out of the Basement
Promotion & Outreach
at University of Limerick
Evelyn McAuley, Archivist, Promotion & Outreach
2. Promoting Special Collections
in a Digital Age
Just because our collections are historical in
nature doesn’t mean that our promotion &
outreach should stay rooted in the past
6. 39,000+ hits in 2014 (first 7 months of
operation)
60,000+ in 2015
Blogging for Archives
7. Good Content Guidelines
Have a target profile in mind, research users and follow the
Keep it short & sweet {125 characters allows for manual RTs
on Twitter}
Shorten links & place at end ~ more likely to increase click-
through rate (proportion of visitors to a web page who follow a hyperte
link to a particular site) {e.g. tools - https://goo.gl/, tinyurl}
Engage followers & other users in conversation - build
community & expand potential audience
Use # selectively - incorporate #words into natural flow & u
to promote event or series
Post at least once a day incl. weekends; space out tweets;
best CTR 08:30-11:00am; 2:00-5:00pm
8. Evaluation & Monitoring
Social Media Analytics
Track impressions; engagement - link
clicks; RTs, comments, etc.
Track increase in reference queries ~
traditional & via Social Media
Stats useful, but don’t rely too heavily
11. LibGuide as subject support
Connect researcher interests with collection resources…
12. Promotion through Professional
Networks
Online Portals: Irish Archives Resource; RASCAL
LinkedIn, Academia.edu and LibraryThing, archival
listservs, Archives & Records Association, etc.
13.
14. Be adaptable
Promotion is important; but more so is creating
relevant services designed by engaging in dialogue
with your users
Be creative ~ good ideas begin with creative thought
Healthy ego ~ market yourself, create opportunities
What are we
learning?
P6A/287, The Armstrong Papers, UL