Friday July 19

Breakout session 3, 2:30- 3:45pm

Session name: Outreach and promotion

Facilitator:

Note taker: Claudia Acosta

#3 OUTREACH

Partnerships outside academic institutions

Working with community based orgs, best practices

A memo of understanding: if someone leaves your library, a point of connections, so that when someone leaves it doesn’t drop

Setting up expectations and guidelines in partnerships

A problem: 2 totally diff ideas of what that partnership entails

Alphabet soup for queer youth in SLC experiences:

Had a negative experience recently, afterwards worked out an application for them to fill out so that we know exactly what they’re going to be saying and doing, share with them your expectations 

Giving teens guidelines on how to treat each other, respect guidelines, signing it — sharing it with them so that they know those expectations

 

Q: how to reach out to potential community partners?

Asking what can we do for you? What do you want out of this? What are your expectations? Create space for them to frame what the opportunity can look like, let them tell you

Pay attention to *their* organizing and community building, look for gaps in their programs, offer something they’d be interested in or on their radar, up to the library to recognize needs and framing it as an educational opportunity

Establish trust! Anti-establishment zinesters are going to be skeptical.

Q: outreach opportunities? For public x academic librarians

Academia reaches out to students, should also reach out to professors ‘hey, this is a tool you can use!’

What does this outreach look like in an academic setting? Different departments in your university.

Who is in better touch with the students than we are? – student organizations

Faculty! Come to us for instruction! Maybe you’ll find more interest+engagement by engaging with a zine about chemistry? Learning tools!

Outreach from a medical librarian perspective: Correcting zines with medical misinformation, so much of it is wrong!!!

Zines about reproductive health — planned parenthood! Listing and sharing resources

Bring your varied interests into the forefront of what you do — bringing in your own interests and letting that guide you at least initially.

A form of outreach: social events organized for after this conference! Grid fest fundraiser and readings!

Examples of outreach: 

Teen creative writing competition

summer camp collars with kids

Code of conduct zine — advising had reached out to someone to help them make it, so that’d be easier to read

Greensboro zine fest has a good relationship with the food co-op, they invited GZF into their space, making zines about food insecurity, community zine workshops at the co-op

Zines as staff development tools. ex. Reading groups with staff-selected topics — let your colleagues know about zines!

Go to zine fests!

Taking zines out of the library — pop-up at the local pride fest, spring time zine workshop at a local greenhouse

collaborations with grade schools, relationships with principal and their own media specialists

A Library flooding incident — you *had* to leave the library! Those partnerships became all the more important. Collabs with the food pantry at a local high school

Miami Zine Fair outreach to Haitian immigrant community: integrating ourselves into existing programming instead of imposing ourselves on them; hosting a zine fair at a community center and inviting those involved in teaching classes at the community center already to be involved. Example: Caribbean dance performance during zine fair.