David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

This Year’s Annual Report

By

Why can’t annual reports be cool? Or at least interesting enough to actually read, watch, etc?

That’s what my library tries to do with ours, anyway. For the last two years, our annual report has been video-only. This year, we improved upon that a bit, and did three things:

Here’s our 2011 annual report, for those interested.

Why do this?

We have to create some type of annual report each year. And honestly … people mostly DON’T look at these. Sure, you can mail them to everyone. Print them out and place them in strategic locations in the library. Send them to parter organizations in your community.

But read them? Maybe some people will give it a cursory glance … and them toss it into the trash, like a greeting card.

With our video? There’s enough eye candy there for people to watch, and maybe learn something more about their library, and what their tax dollars are actually going to.

That’s the idea, anyway!

 

Our First Completely Online Annual Report

By

Our first all online, interactive annual report

Annual reports – gotta do ’em, and they’re usually boring as all get out. Right? This year, we decided to be a bit creative and have some fun with ours.

OK – partly, we had to “be creative” this year – the printing budget was cut, so we couldn’t do our normal glossy, 4-color annual report. Sometimes, those types of constraints are a good thing!

So, my library’s Creative Group (marketing, programming, and the web dudes) put their collective creative heads together and came up with a really cool, interactive, all-online annual report. Take a peek!

Lots of parts and pieces came together here – some copywriting, some remixing of content created throughout the year, our director making a video in front of a green screen at WIBW, a local TV news station, and lots of heavy Flash creation (by Michael Perkins, our Digital Services Supervisor).

Even better – last night at our monthly board meeting, the board members loved it … and the local newspaper wrote an article about it, too. How often does YOUR library get an article, in the paper … about your annual report?

Good stuff (and good staff) at my library!