The SAA Committee on Public Awareness (COPA) is excited to be joining this year’s purveyors of hot topics and cool demonstrations at the Reference, Access, and Outreach (RAO) Section Marketplace of Ideas at the 2016 Annual Meeting. In the spirit of trying new avenues for outreach, we are not only encouraging attendees to live tweet with #ArchivesAWARE, but are also experimenting in LIVE BLOGGING–RIGHT NOW.

We are asking groups of Marketplace shoppers some outreach-related questions to get discussions going, and below are some of the responses we are getting LIVE:

1. What was the best new outreach initiative you’ve tried? If not new, what is your go-to for archival outreach?

• Chicago. Open Archives Day. Did a tour on a day when enrollment management was doing tours. Got middle school children in to see archives.
• MIT. Centennial of move from Boston to Cambridge. Made a coloring book and had crayon packets. Hands out at cookouts on campus with children, hands them out at commencement.
• Arlington, Virginia. Lobby displays in the public library. Took a colorful business postcard and turned it into a puzzle. Have now made five of them. 48-piece puzzle. Adults and children both like it, serves as a conversation starter. About $60 to make one.
• Library of Virginia. 2 year anniversary of transcribe program. Have programs once a month to have people come in to transcribe. Get a diverse audience of transcribers. Just did a Facebook post on two-year anniversary.
• Go-to and a fail – inexpensive banners. Picture and a paragraph. Can bring them to different events. Have brought them to County Fairs with someone there to talk about posters, but people didn’t really engage. Over-reliance on go-to activity.
• Go-to. Behind the scenes tour at the Corning Glass Library. Can be a lot of traffic. Looking at a virtual tour option.
• Library of Congress. Have users tweet. Give them hashtags.
• Social Media is a go to.
• Exhibits and public programs are go tos.
• Meet-ups at the Library of Congress have been successful, in-person and online.
• Flicker feed has gotten a lot of people talking about collections and providing information

2. How do you measure success for outreach activities? What are your benchmarks?

• Statistics. Best performing posts, traffic and interactions.
• In the case of the puzzle, people continue to use it.
• Very little setting of benchmarks before events.
• Measuring the impact by gathering feedback through conversations.

3. That being said, what have been some of your outreach fails?

4. Who do you consider an outreach superstar (not just archives!)

• Corning Glass Museum.
• University of Iowa Special Collections social media, especially Tumblr and YouTube.
• Austin Archives Bazaar.

The SAA Committee on Public Awareness (COPA) is excited to be joining this year’s purveyors of hot topics and cool demonstrations at the Reference, Access, and Outreach (RAO) Section Marketplace of Ideas at the 2016 Annual Meeting. In the spirit of trying new avenues for outreach, we are not only encouraging attendees to live tweet with #ArchivesAWARE, but are also experimenting in LIVE BLOGGING–RIGHT NOW.

Jill is ready to get started!

We are asking groups of Marketplace shoppers some outreach-related questions to get discussions going, and below are some of the responses we are getting LIVE:

1. What was the best new outreach initiative you’ve tried? If not new, what is your go-to for archival outreach?

• Campus-wide open house at MIT. Cartoon of a character crossing the bridge from Boston to Cambridge, blew it up for people to take pictures with. Used a fake plastic torch for people to hold. Inexpensive, fun thing to do. Photos were tweeted out. Big success with families.
• Book talk at University of Hawaii. Air conditioner went down. Made fans out of reproductions of pictures of an individual in the archives.
• University of Wyoming. Faculty members – matched research interests with collections. Invited them to a limited open house. Had materials. Great way to connect materials and faculty members. Had event in the early evening. Did research on faculty beforehand.
• Southern Illinois University. Working with incoming graduate students. Break up into groups and tell them about sources before they decide on theses and dissertation. Offer pizza and beer.
• University of Alaska, Anchorage. Go to new faculty orientation. Anthropology faculty are frequently interested. Basic presence where they are has been really helpful.
• Idea for a bring a friend to work day for student assistants who work in the archives.
• Center for Jewish History. In-reach. Exhibit about historical cookbooks currently. To augment it they are having a historical bake-off, things like a jello mold with horse radish in it.

Go To’s for Outreach

• Exhibits
• Social Media – Twitter, Facebook, blogging, Vine, Instagram
• Tours
• Movie Night
• Teach with primary sources
• Workshops – Like personal digital archiving. Sexier the better!

2. How do you measure success for outreach activities? What are your benchmarks?

–

3. That being said, what have been some of your outreach fails?

• Tours and talks to prospective students, was an uninterested audience.
• Library audio tour that said front doors of archives were kept closed to keep room cool.
• University of South Carolina – Twice they reached to every Chair in History and Political Science across South Carolina to generate research use. Reached out to 50 people, zero response. Hard to get faculty to break their patterns.

4. Who do you consider an outreach superstar (not just archives!)

• David Carmichael was on public radio talking about archives, was very impressive.
• Art Museum on Southern Illinois campus has a very vibrant community.

 Group 1

The SAA Committee on Public Awareness (COPA) is excited to be joining this year’s purveyors of hot topics and cool demonstrations at the Reference, Access, and Outreach (RAO) Section Marketplace of Ideas at the 2016 Annual Meeting. In the spirit of trying new avenues for outreach, we will not only encourage attendees to live tweet with #ArchivesAWARE, but will also experiment in LIVE BLOGGING. 

We have prepared a number of outreach-related questions to start discussions with groups of Marketplace shoppers, and plan to share responses throughout the event, which takes place Friday, August 5, from 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm. Below are some of the questions we’ll be discussing:

1. What was the best new outreach initiative you’ve tried? If not new, what is your go-to for archival outreach?

2. How do you measure success for outreach activities? What are your benchmarks?

3. That being said, what have been some outreach fails?

4. Who is an outreach superstar (not just archives!)

If you are attending ARCHIVES*RECORDS 2016, please consider joining us for lively outreach discussion and the live blogging experiment. And if you can’t attend, simple follow #ArchivesAWARE and this blog feed to follow and join in the conversation!