It seems like just yesterday that school and academic librarians were wrapping up and reflecting on the academic year. Today, schools and colleges are gearing up for the fall semester. With the start of a new year comes a need to get out there and meet the new teachers and faculty members to share the services you can offer, as well as teach a whole new batch of students.

And as tempting as it is to try and get your entire message out there, it’s sometimes easy to give so much information that the audience has a hard time remembering what exactly it was that you were saying. So here are a few tips for maximizing your message:

1. Know your audience

Knowing your audience means you’re more likely to tell them something that they’ll want to know. Are you talking to freshmen in high school who have never done a research paper before? Perhaps you want to introduce them to a library that’s there to support research needs. Are you teaching college freshmen who have never seen an academic library before? New faculty who completed graduate school at another institution? In each of these cases you’ll want to clarify the roles of your specific library. Likewise, if you’re doing a refresher for returning students or faculty, it makes more sense to focus on new services they might not be aware of and existing services that haven’t traditionally been well marketed.

2. Give them something to do

The academic year kicks off with lots of listening for many people. There are orientation sessions, committee meetings, classes, and countless hours of the day are spent listening to others talk. When you know your audience has been on the receiving end of a lot of informational sessions, it’s nice to give them something to do. If you have access to clickers, even that small level of activity engages the audience and can even be used as a platform for discussion. If you don’t have clickers,  you can replicate the interaction with colored sheets of paper or having people stand up or sit down based on their answers. I’ve had great luck using worksheets to guide student note taking. Even the act of reading the worksheet to know what we’ll cover, waiting for the pieces of information to fill in the blanks, and participating in small group activities to complete the worksheet has meant library instruction sessions having a higher level of engagement.

3. Give them something

Even if you pay attention to the characteristics and information needs of your audience, and even if you use good active learning techniques in your presentation, your information can still be lost. When flooded with a lot of new concepts, information, and facts it’s hard to keep everything straight. Giving out your business card or a handout means your audience will have a way to get back in touch with you. Later, when they’re going through all the things they’ve accumulated in these early days of the academic year, seeing the handout or card will trigger their memory to remind them that someone from the library came to tell them something. And sometimes that trigger is enough to get them back through the door (or into the email inbox).

4. Be virtual

Something good to put on that handout (or on your business card… think a sticker with extra information on the back of it) is a URL pointing to more information. If you have a lot for people to learn but you doubt they’ll remember it after they leave the room, giving them a place to find it later can be a good way to make sure they’ll have the information at a point of need. Creating subject guides about library services, in addition to subjects, can be a quick and easy way to put information out there where people can access it later. Make a quick web-based video introducing yourself, and you’ll help them put a face to a name. (And show them how friendly you are in the process!)

5. What’s your number one goal for them to remember?

Any my personal number-one-technique is to have one major point that I want the audience to remember. Most of the time it’s that they can always contact me for further information on the topic, whether that’s how to do women’s studies research, implement a new technology in their teaching, or think about the future of publishing. One of the first things I say in a session is that I’ll be going over a lot, so it’s okay if they forget. The one thing to focus on remembering is how to get in touch with me. When I introduce topics and can see that some people are struggling to keep it all straight in their heads, I say it again. Typically by the end of the session I’ve said it at least a dozen times. Sometimes I hear from people sometimes I don’t, but by the end of a session when I get them chanting “get in touch with you” when I ask “what should you do if you forget what I’m showing you?” I know they are remembering the one piece of information I’ve identified as most useful, and it’ll probably stick around in their heads for a while.

Do you have any tips for getting the word out?

Image Credits:

Beautyproof by larskflem

Free School Child’s Hands Choosing Colored Pencils by Pink Sherbet Photography

A Wedding Present by lechampiondumonde.com

Geocaching by William Hook

Ghetomundial Youngfolk by d_runk

Lauren Pressley is the Instructional Design Librarian at Wake Forest University. She also blogs at Lauren’s Library Blogs and spends a fair amount of time on Twitter, too.

Lauren Pressley

Lauren Pressley is the Instructional Design Librarian at Wake Forest University. In this role she works with librarians and faculty to improve the design of their teaching and to share information about integrating appropriate educational technology. She also works with emerging technologies. Lauren’s passion is helping people learn about the changing information landscape and think about what that means for them as consumers and producers of information. Recently Lauren published So You Want To Be a Librarian and Wikis for Libraries. She was an ALA Emerging Leader in 2008 and was a recognized as a Library Journal Mover & Shaker in 2009. She frequently writes and presents on education, instruction, technology, and the future of libraries. Lauren also blogs at ALA Learning, tweets as @laurenpressley, and can be reached at lauren@laurenpressley.com.

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