The 65 Reasons to Love Your Library campaign can take place at any time it is convenient for your library. Most of the ideas below can be adapted for a promotional campaign that lasts for a week, a month, or a year. Get your Friends groups and other library lovers involved in your planning. The following suggestions should help you get started.

• Develop a calendar for your 65 Reasons campaign and send it, along with a news release, well ahead of time to your local media. Remember to develop and distribute individual releases about each event as the campaign period progresses. (Sample news releases are in the kit.)
• Make appointments to see in person the right people at the most important media outlets you want to promote your campaign.
• Display your 65 Reasons to Love Your Library poster and invite your patrons to add to the list of reasons by filling in a line on the blank poster. (Both are in the kit.)
• Wear your Love Your Library sticker and urge your volunteers and patrons to wear theirs, too.
• Add your library’s name to the sticker if you wish. (A template for both styles is in the kit.)
• Using your schedule as the guide, adapt and distribute to your local media –newspaper, radio, and television –the news releases in the kit. Try to add a few specific details about how your library provides the service featured in each release. Add pictures, too, if you have them.
• Write and distribute additional releases for your favorite reasons to love your library.

• Encourage patrons – adults and children – to write a paragraph or a paper about why they love your library. Find a way to share these remarks in writing or orally. Select some of the patron remarks to submit to your local newspaper as letters to the editors (with the writers’ approvals, of course) or as part of a news release or a regular column.

In a website for Wisconsin libraries, there is a place for patrons to send their reasons for loving their library electronically. In Troup, Texas, the winning entries in an essay contest for children grades 1-8 were published in a booklet.

• Conduct an art contest inviting patrons to enter artistic representations – photos or handmade pictures or sculptures - that illustrate one or more reasons to love your library.
• Ask local merchants to put your mini-posters in their monthly bills. You may be surprised at their cooperation. (Sixteen merchants in Lindale, Texas, regularly include a flier from the Lindale Public Library in their monthly bills.)
• Plan special events around the whole 65 Reasons to Love Your Library campaign or around one or a cluster of reasons. Make these events fun and educational with catchy titles.
• During your celebratory period, feature one or more reasons to love the library each day. Include the specific reasons on a calendar that you can print and distribute to your patrons and the press.
• Continue your 65 Reasons campaign throughout the year with a more ambitious slogan – “For every season, there’s a reason!” or “The Year of Reasons” or . . . .
• Hold an event in your library that will interest your patrons and appeal to the visual media in town –an event that will make good video and pictures. Consider a timely exhibit, a costume story time for kids, a big name reader or an author presentation, for example.
• Partner with other local organizations to plan, implement, and cross-promote events.
• Recruit speakers to talk about the 65 Reasons campaign to local groups.
• Conduct a workshop or just an informal tour or lesson for more in-depth knowledge about some of the goodies offered in or by your library. Some really good topics include understanding your library’s computer system; finding answers on the web and by using such resources as Tex-Share; your special collections; and choosing the best books for children.
• Pitch a good story idea to a local radio talk show –a panel discussion, a read-a-thon, a regular announcement about what’s new with your library. (The Friends of the Roseau Area (MN) public library hosted a “Radiothon” with donated time from a local station. The fundraiser took in $11,000.)
• Use the 65 Reasons idea as part of a Love Your Library Month campaign:
  • Announce February as Love Your Library Month or announce a specific day in February as Love Your Library Day. (Of course, you can use any dates you wish, but many libraries have staked out February as the month.)
  • Use or adapt the same 65 Reasons stickers and posters.
  • Ask your mayor to read a proclamation about Love Your Library Month and thus officially announce Love Your Library month or day. A sample proclamation is in the kit.
  • In February, Valentine’s Day opens up many promotional and fund-raising possibilities. (The Duluth, Minnesota, Library sends a valentine card to patrons. Inside is a mailback valentine card requesting a contribution and topped with the line, “Love Your Library with a Gift.” Many libraries hold raffles for items that would make good Valentine gifts.)
  • Some libraries offer a range of suggestions as to how their patrons can demonstrate their love for their libraries. Visit the California Libraries and Foundations website for a lengthy list enumerating “How to Love Your Library.”
  • Use programs and displays to feature many kinds of love, such as love for families, sweethearts, children, pets, country, community, and, of course, libraries!

No doubt you will think of other ways to bring 65 Reasons to Love Your  Library to your community’s attention. Please share your suggestions for using 65Reasons and your success stories. Send them to gloriam@txla.org, and the PR Committee will share them with others.