by Melissa Correll
At the PaLA Annual Conference in October, I attended a presentation by Lisa Erickson and Amy Krize Suveg (PaLA PR/Marketing Committee) and Teri Hurst and Joe Knezic (PPO&S). Their presentation, “How to Use the PA Forward Brand, and Keep Your Identity” featured a creative and unique marketing strategy implemented by James V. Brown Library in Williamsport.

In addition to the PA Forward banners and posters dotting the library’s interior, the James V. Brown Library added shelf talkers for the five literacies, placing them with relevant books. The shelf talkers are attractive and eye-catching, and simple to create, relocate, and replace as needed. This is an easy way to highlight resources and raise patrons’ awareness about PA Forward.

Assistant Director Melissa Rowse credited the marketing firm PPO&S with separating each literacy’s “book” and creating the shelf talkers, and explained how James V. Brown Library got the idea to bring the shelf talkers to their building. Rowse wrote in an email, “We saw the Altoona Library do a display on medical books for health literacy and thought – why not add shelf talkers around the library? … Again, our ultimate goal was for the public to start recognizing the PA Forward logo and the term – literacies.”

Rowse explained that a few patrons asked about the literacies they had seen about the library. Patrons’ questions about the materials they see can open conversations about PA Forward’s goals.

Want to create shelf talkers for your own library? The “books” for each literacy, as well as other marketing materials, are available in the PA Forward Toolkit.

Melissa Correll is an Instructional Services Librarian at Lycoming College. She is currently reading Not Just Where To Click: Teaching Students How To Think About Information, edited by Troy A. Swanson and Heather Jagman.