So what?
Why
should someone in your community care?
How does
it save money? Time? Stress? How
can someone improve their life?
How does
product/service/program make a difference? How can the product/service benefit your community?
Businesses – What kind? Associations?
Age Groups – Elderly? Boomers? Students
--New or returning? Community Concerns – Economic
or Social?
What group have you lost? What groups have never found you?
When, where, who and when are people
meeting in your community and what are they doing?
What are
your top five reference/referral questions?
What are
the top five reference/referral questions that you don’t do a great job
answering?
Now, what is the precise language used in these queries.
What
books/media are your most stolen? What books/media are your most
requested?
What are
you most embarrassed not to have available for customers?
If you told someone 10 Free
things that they
could do with your resources that you think
might surprise them, what would they be?
Who are
the people/groups in my community trying to:
Make a difference -- Make money -- Make people’s
dreams come true
Have fun – Constantly working to improve
themselves/the community --
Ask : “How can I
join them, help them or ask them to help me/us?”
When can
I do this program/event to make an impact?
When can
I repeat this program to see if the failure was a time issue?
When can
I do outreach based on my branch/institution/desk schedule?
What
story angles or ideas on the front covers of these magazines can I make
into a program?
O, Shape, Reader’s Digest, People, Women’s Day,
Florida Trend, PC Computing
Who has to do the program?
Is there a another way? Another
expert? Another place? Another
time? A volunteer? A
support staff member? A regular patron? A service group? A Friends of
the Library member? A retired librarian? A retired volunteers based service? A
business that encourages its employees to volunteer to assist non-profits?
A chance to build an information literacy support group?
A church or social group with a mission to improve lives
through training initiatives? Students that need service hours for
scholarships or honor society? A way to present it
online, as CDR hand-out, as video, as a tutorial? A
grant to fund hiring of temporary help or fund an honorarium?
“Whoever wants
to reach a distant goal must take many small steps.”
~
Helmut Schmidt,
Rhonda K.
Kitchens/Sellitwithsizzle.com
