Trying Something New – Open House

We tried something new at our library this week – an open house for township employees. One of our major goals of late is to educate the public about everything the library has to offer – services, programs and resources. So, I got to thinking, how about we try to reach out to a ready made audience – the one that works in the same building we do, other township employees.
We created an open house event and a flyer to promote the idea. We included the information in the township employee monthly newsletter, it was mentioned at township meetings and a reminder email went out the day before.
We used our Keurig to offer coffee, tea, hot chocolate and other hot beverages and bought the good donuts! Plus, we had a raffle for a $10 gift card to the local gas station/convenience store, which helped in figuring out how many people stopped by. We made copies of many of our flyers, created a new one to promote our online resources, updated information and displayed everything to inform and educate our fellow colleagues.

We started our event at 7:45am because many of the staff begin work at 8:15 and I wanted to make sure they had enough time to stop by before getting to their desk. Honestly, I expected only a handful of people and am excited to report that about 15 people showed up! A few of which are regular library users, while others work across the hall from us and don’t use many of the library services.

We issued library cards, gave impromptu tours, talked about eBooks and our online resources and I was so excited to hear almost everyone announce, “I didn’t know you had/did that!” I’m hoping each of these people went back to their offices and talked up the library to their co-workers or went home and told their family about what they learned.

I would have loved to see a few more employees stop by, but I think we’ll try it again in the fall and hope for a larger turnout. I’m never sure how something new will turnout, but I’m so glad we gave it a try and that the people who came to the library learned something new.