Pop Goes the Library: Using Pop Culture to Connect With Your Whole Community

by Sophie and Burns Brookover, Elizabeth Burns

Overview

Whether you regularly follow entertainment and gossip news, or wondered "Corbin Who?" when you saw the recent ALA READ poster, Pop Goes the Library will help you connect with your users and energize your staff. Pop culture blogger-librarians Sophie Brookover and Elizabeth Burns define what pop culture is (and isn't) and share insights, tips, techniques, and success stories from all types of libraries.

You'll discover practical strategies and ideas for incorporating the pop culture passions of your users into collections, programs, and services, plus a range of marketing and outreach ideas, technology tools, and ready-to-go programs you can start using today. Here is an eye-opening book that's as much fun to read as it is to apply!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781573878708
Publisher:	Information Today, Inc.
Publication date:	06/12/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

Editorial Reviews

This entertaining book by the creators of the "Pop Goes the Library" blog is a breath of fresh air for those progressive librarians wanting to secure their library's future by making patron interests the focus of library services. Popular culture, assert the authors, is about library customers, not librarians. This shift in focus may seem obvious or trivial but in fact points up the great failing in many library promotional efforts-we approach library service from our own world view and not that of the people we serve. After offering multiple perspectives on the definition of "popular culture," Brookover (an LJ2006 Mover & Shaker) and Burns discuss ways to uncover the interests of library users, including surveys, focus groups, and other creative methods. Then chapters cover collection development, marketing and outreach, "trend spotting," and the essential role of information technology in a library's overall program of service. The final chapters offer terrific programming suggestions, including a month-by-month calendar of ideas. Throughout the book, "Voices from the Field" sections present different attitudes and strategies offered by real-world librarians on the topics under discussion. Appendixes offer sample survey questions, recommended web sites, and other resources. In all, this is an exciting and essential book for those librarians ready to take up the challenge of keeping their libraries relevant to the communities they serve.
—Rachel Q. Davis

Library Journal