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

3. Exhibitions ~
if you’ve got it, flaunt it!

4. Physical | Digital
Hunt Museum http://limerick1916.ul.ie/

5. Promotion through Social
Media

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

9. Promotion through Conventional
Media

10. Promotion through
Faculty & Student Engagement
Be an Ambassador…

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.

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