Advocacy: From Awareness to Funding, the next chapter

Geek the Library: community-based public awareness campaign targets increased support for libraries

Funded by a $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, OCLC has developed a community-based public awareness campaign designed to highlight the vital role of public libraries in today's challenging environment and to increase local library support.

The Geek the Library campaign introduces the word 'geek' as a verb and encourages the public to talk about what they 'geek'—whether it’s engineering, superheroes or art. Campaign messaging illustrates the fact that everyone is passionate about something—everyone 'geeks' something—and that the public library supports it all.

The awareness campaign strategy is based on findings from the 2008 OCLC report, From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America. It utilizes a broad range of marketing, advertising and advocacy techniques to reach the audience identified in the report as "probable" library supporters—a group of regular voters who are likely to support library funding initiatives, but who are not fully committed.

Working with local library leaders, OCLC is piloting the public awareness campaign with a selection of libraries and library systems in Georgia and central Iowa, as well as Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Shelbyville, Indiana; and Zion, Illinois. Campaign efforts launched in summer 2009 and will run through early 2010. Upon completion, OCLC will make the campaign materials and other guides, along with information from the pilot campaigns, available to library leaders throughout the country to assist them in their efforts to strengthen local support for libraries.