Communication in the media library – Stéphane Torregrosa

In addition to my work as a freelance graphic designer/communications consultant, I work in a media library. Nothing to do with communication, it’s true, but a pleasant insertion into culture and multimedia. In the era of digital renewal, tablets, e-readers, online music and social networks, the image of the library appears a little dated.

A partial image

If you are like most people and stopped drawing at the end of your childhood, if I ask you to draw me a man or a house, there is a good chance that your drawing will look exactly like what you would have drawn as a child. Not that you aren’t capable of doing better, but your left brain has stored a mental image of the «man» and the «house» that you will carry with you for the rest of your life, unless you start drawing again.

We have numerous representations of this type that come to us either from our experiences, or from a sort of «collective memory». In fact, if I ask you to close your eyes and think for example of the word “church”, you will have a mental image, a direct representation of the way you know or imagine a church.

Similarly, people have a representation of libraries that comes to them from the collective imagination or from their own experiences. The collective imagination tends to project an opaque image of our structures. Dusty books, dead silence, an old librarian with a tight bun,… in short, it’s not the most fun place we’ve ever been.

This is one of the most important reasons for our need for communication. In fact, everyone knows what a library is, most of the inhabitants of a municipality are aware of its existence and the services found there, but only partially.

What image do you want to project?

Whatever you do, whether you have a website or not, whether you are present on social networks or not, whether you have communication channels or not, you still communicate! Whether it’s voluntary or not, whether you have a communications strategy in place or whether your management is resistant to any communications idea, you communicate ! We can’t do anything about it, it escapes us, we are communicative beings, we are influenced by everything around us, and everything around us leads us to make a judgment in relation to our values.

The exterior of your building, its maintenance, the signage or lack thereof in your municipality, the staff of your library, its reception service… All this conveys an image that will have an impact on your user. Whether you like it or not, communicate! So why not try to control the image you project?

Why communicate?

You want to inform your users of an event, you will therefore need to communicate it. But there is also the need to reach an unregistered audience, an unconstrained audience and let them know what your facility can offer them.

Communication shakes us!

As a communicator, I believe the first person affected by your communication efforts is yourself. When we start to think about the way we want to communicate, the values ​​we want to convey, this must necessarily call us into question. For me, communication must be authentic and sell who you really are (my grandmother said that a liar is caught faster than a thief). If you want to change people’s image of your library, you may need to think about questioning your services. We often think that people no longer go to libraries because they don’t like reading. Let’s face it. Isn’t it also because they are partly unaware of what they can bring to them? Isn’t it also because the library must evolve and offer new services? Shouldn’t it open up, develop new services, be a place of exchange, meetings, life and modernity?

The last movement dates back to a few decades ago, when media libraries appeared. This one is over thirty years old. Our society has been disrupted like never before. Sure, we have multimedia spaces and the ability to borrow DVDs/CDs, but isn’t there a deeper change to be made? Shouldn’t we consider a redesign of our spaces?

The answer is yours. Try to define the particularities of your structure. Indeed, every media library is different, or should be. I believe it is important to define the particularities of your structure, those linked to the people who make up your team, the skills they can bring, those linked to the structure of your building (full floor or floors, well separated spaces or not, large surface area or small space, etc.). All this will allow you to establish who you fundamentally are and what you can communicate.

We talk a lot about third place libraries and I think it’s a good movement. Recreating the media library as a living space, a place of conviviality.

Attract the public and disrupt our customs

Yes, we have a cultural mission! But sometimes it’s so elitist that we only reach a small portion of the potential audience around us. More than anything, you need to know how to combine it with the location of your media library. Who is the audience around you? If your activities, your shows, your entertainment seem completely nebulous to the inhabitants of the neighborhood, there is little chance that you can change your image.

Of course it’s not about broadcasting “Bienvenue chez les ch’tis” to attract as many people as possible, but a little openness doesn’t hurt. Putting ourselves in the background, adapting to the young audience, taking them to meet local groups, making the audience live together, this is also our mission. I invite you to read this article on my colleague Johann Brun’s blog: « Library mix: DJ in the media library« . Why not encourage young video game consumers to do more than Minecraft in the media space and become creators of their own video games. Also in this case I invite you to discover the blog of Jean Alvin, my direct multimedia colleague: » The benefits of creating games in the Media Library« .

Why not also leave our walls to search for the «non-public»? We had the opportunity to collaborate twice with high schools in our city to make short films. The first was a great little film about the “Daphné” myth (and Bim! for the cultural reference in the middle of a teen movie!) and the second a clip about bullying in schools. These are times of exchange, of debate, which are precious, with an audience of boys and girls that we didn’t necessarily have in the media library.

We offer them the opportunity to film, to train in short film techniques, screenwriting, editing with a pinch of special effects. All this is certainly imperfect, but we have marked a time, we have, in doing so, dusted off the image they could have had of a media library.

So much so that now, outside of school, these kids come to ask us to participate with us in the cultural events of the media library! Two examples with this first video as part of the “Foulées littéraires”, the sports book festival and a second which is a short reportage on the cartoonist and illustrator Edith.

Not everything succeeds, sometimes there are failures. Like all libraries in France and Navarre, we organize reading workshops. Having once participated in one of these workshops, the dynamics and quality of the exchanges gave me the idea of ​​filming these workshops to make them available to our readers on iPads within the media library, and then on a Vimeo account. This would have enabled the creation of content associated with our readers. It was no longer: “your librarians propose” but “readers propose”.

After a few months the formula no longer took hold, there was also a certain reluctance, completely understandable, to find oneself on the internet. So we moved on.

We try to find opportunities to create content whenever possible with our users. If the primary objective is not communication, it necessarily becomes so through the positive image it transmits.

With what communication tools?

What resources are available to you today? We are not all the same in this sense, it depends on many parameters and we, as media library workers, do not always have control over the different communication tools.

Here are essentially the different tools available today in the Web 2.0 era:

– The building. Its exhibition spaces.

– The staff: the information they provide, the smiles they give, the services they offer, the skills they transmit, etc.

– The municipal newspaper: generally there are cultural activities.

– The media library website: this must live, it must evolve according to your news. If visitors continually come across the same page, which is never updated, your site will be nothing more than access to the catalog of the Media Library’s works, and it would be a shame to limit it to this.

– A blog! Nothing better to create regularly updated content and create a community with your users!

– Social networks: it seems absolutely essential to me that media libraries take advantage of these media. You can reach people in your region very easily through this medium. There’s no secret, you have to find people where they are, and studies show how dependent people have become on social networks. It’s also the chance to reach a younger audience.

– Our activities and services: as we have seen above, it is possible to create projects that attract new audiences, even if this sometimes means leaving our walls and looking for them where they are.

Of course, you won’t necessarily have access to all of these media. Before being a structure, a media library is part of a whole, of a set of services of your municipality, of a political will, and this can sometimes slow down your momentum. But what you can do, do. Whatever is within your range of possibilities, whatever is possible, do it. Experiment, test your audience, ask your users for their opinions, what they would like to see appear in their media library, in their wildest dreams, surprise them!

Communication is not just a flyer, it is not a poster or a website. It’s all true, but above all it’s who you are, what you do on a daily basis, that will have a much greater impact than all the most beautiful glossy flyers in the world! Be innovative, try new formulas. We are in an environment that is easily influenced by the traditional «we have always done it this way…»

Never overlook the power of word of mouth from your users. They are your most powerful communication resource! For the rest, if your management and your municipality offer you the freedom to use social networks and your website, then do it! Be creative on the web and don’t hesitate to read my article on Twitter to understand how to expand your network and promote your services.