If you need a lift, look at these innovative public libraries...

The library landscape is incredibly bleak at the moment with events in the US, so I wanted to flag up a couple of brilliant examples of library innovation that might give information professionals reason to smile.

In March I presented at the Edge Public Library Conference in Edinburgh - hence the header pic of that beautiful city - on Social Media for Public Libraries in a Post-Twitter world. (The organisers asked me to do this after hearing people say nice things about a similar session I'd done in Kilkenny - if you're interested the slides from that are not identical but cover the same theme.) It was a brilliant event, very uplifting, and huge thanks to Gráinne Crawford and her team for inviting me and making me feel so welcome.

As part of the same conference they have three Innovation Awards and I was honoured but somewhat daunted to be asked to judge the Digital category. Edge 2025 had lots of nominations and I was sent the four finalists - my job was to pick the winner and the highly commended, who would be invited to the Gala Dinner to receive their awards. Here is a summary of the winning entry and first runner-up - I found reading their entries good for the soul.

Highly commended: Tickets for the Afterlife

Tickets For the Afterlife is a web-app to "…help users navigate choices related to their body, memories, and legacies after death." It's not the typical thing a library would provide, but Redbridge saw a need to help their community and learned the skills required to make it happen - and they executed it so, so well. You can read a Guardian article about it here but honestly I’d recommend experiencing it for yourself at afterlifetickets.co.uk.

I loved this whole project, and it's beautifully done - here's what I wrote to be read out at the Awards:

“I’ve been in librarianship for a long time, and I can’t remember seeing such an original idea as this. We like to think of libraries as being at the heart of community but that doesn’t happen automatically - we have to make it happen by getting our communities where they need to go. Redbridge identified a unique way to provide support to their community and beyond, in an area that is absolutely universal - dying, death and grief - and did so in such a friendly, accessible way. Tickets for the afterlife is beautifully put together, completely unique, and hugely valuable - a brilliant piece of work.”

— On Tickets For The Afterlife

Huge congrats to Anita Luby and Redbridge Libraries on a truly different, innovative service.

Winner: The Hive

Darlington Borough Council created The Hive, a digital hub with virtual reality gear, coding and robotics, 3D printing, animation, digital sewing and quite a lot more. (In fact you can get a good idea of what's on offer by checking the 'what's on' section at the bottom of the Darlington Libraries homepage).

I know that there are quite a few libraries creating maker spaces and so on, but the way Darlington have done this is fantastic - it's a beautiful space, and full of creativity. The reason I chose it as the winner is the extraordinary impact it has had - as Suzy Hill said in her award application, footfall was down, book issues were decreasing and the perception of the digital offering was that it was poor, and The Hive has completely changed that to an amazing degree. Visitors are up by so much, and so is everything else - I feel like they've changed what a library MEANS to the people of their community, and gone from struggle to real triumph.

Here's the comments I wrote which were read out at the Gala Dinner, to announce the winner:

“‘The Hive’s digital transformation has been extraordinarily successful. Sometimes the word ‘digital’ can be overused and be so general it loses all meaning, but what Darlington have done is made the digital tangible - they’ve made digital resources and activities of so many kinds available to groups who really need and appreciate them. In doing so I’m confident they redefined the idea of what a public library IS for their local community, and have converted scores of youngsters into lifelong library users. I’ve chosen them as winners partly due to the sheer impact of what they’ve done - this digital transformation has had a halo effect on all their services. Borrowing is up, digital borrowing is up, educational interactions are up, website use is up and the number of people visiting the library is way up. People come for the digital transformation, and they STAY for everything else we have to offer in libraries. Finally, it’s hard to imagine better feedback for anything, ever, than this comment from a Year 3 pupil who visited The Hive: “This is the best day of my entire life!” Congratulations to our incredible winners!’”

— On The Hive

I love this project: I found The Hive's work to be uplifting, hopeful and genuinely inspiring.

Edge2025 was brilliant - I missed some talks I really wanted to see on Day 2 as I was hot-footing it to Dublin for another talk, but I can wholeheartedly recommend the conference if you’re able to go next year.

An interview in Information Today

This is just a preview - download the PDF below to read

A couple of months or so before the current Museum and Library cuts in the US kicked in, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by my friend and former collaborator Justin Hoenke for Information Today. I enjoyed the questions and the extremely kind write-up - thank you Justin! You can download the interview here [PDF].

We talk about my job, writing a book, running training and workshops, and amazing library experiences that stay with you.

Show-notes: guest appearence on the Keeper & Curator Podcast, talking social media

I had one of my favourite professional conversations ever the other day, and as it happens it was recorded! I was honoured to be a guest on the Keeper & Curator podcast, run by my colleagues at York Helena Cox and Gary Brannan, which despite being new has already been fantastically successful (number 1 in the Visual Arts UK podcast chart, wooop). I’ve loved long-form conversation podcasts for so long, so to be actually in one and have a really great discussion was properly fun. We talked a lot about social media, about what works and what doesn’t, about exploring art abroad, and about the University of York’s sculpture trail.

I know it’s a big swing to expect anyone reading this to want to listen to me on a podcast about Art, so I thought I’d provide some shownotes with time-codes that tell you what we talk about and when, in case any of it is of interest or relevance to you. A large portion of the chat is relevant to anyone interested in using social media to engage audiences, across libraries, HE, and the Arts more generally.

Here’s the podcast:

First things first, you can find the episode Social Media and Unfinished Business here on Spotify, or you can find it on Apple Podcasts if you prefer, and probably a bunch of other places besides. Here’s the Apple version embedded:

0:00 - 2:17 Preamble

The welcomes and hellos happen in this bit.

We recorded in the Library’s Podcast Studio - it’s one of our most popular services and I’ve spent some time marketing it, but never used it before. It was pretty nice, extremely high quality mics where you feel like you can hear the blood in your veins they’re so sensitive… Here we all are, in a post-record selfie.

From left-to-right: Gary (the Keeper), me (the guest), and Helena (the Curator)

2:18 - 13:49 social media and the arts

In this section we talk a little about the personality-driven social media that Helena does via the Art@York profiles, which I think is absolutely brilliant. You can find Art@York on Facebook here (the former Library account, as you’ll hear if you listen to this bit!), or Art@York on Insta here, or Art@York on Bluesky here.

We talk a lot about why art collections work on Instagram etc, and I found it really interesting to explore this. I do think the overwhelming availability of everything means curation of any kind is more important than ever, and I do think we’ve all become so good at using imagery in our social media that it just becomes white noise - so meaningful imagery on social media really makes a difference.

13:50 - 18:37 can social media be taught or is it intuitive?

An interesting question from Gary prompts a discussion about whether social media can be taught. It absolutely can be (please get in touch and book a workshop!) but certain approaches do rely on an intuitive grasp. Either way though, putting personality into your comms is what builds relationship and engagement - if it’s fully corporate, people just do not respond.

18:38 - 24:35 AI in social media

I have over time become massively against using for example AI-generated imagery on professional social media, and this section covers why. You basically alienate a large part of your potential audience if you continue to use AI slop.

24:36 - 29:39 The different demographics for different social media platforms

One of the traps institutions often fall into when doing social media is treating all the platforms the same, and cross-posting content. I get why this happens, with time-pressures being primarily to blame, but the issue is that the platforms work completely differently, and have quite different demographics.

29:40 - 39:29 Creativity, music, and being from a line of artists but unable to produce visual art…

The Queen Mother, by Peter Walbourn

I hail from generations of artists, and I cannot draw a line or a circle or indeed absolutely anything at all, with any skill. My Mum is an incredible artist (our house is filled with things she’s made for us) and so was her Dad, Peter Walbourn. He once painted the Queen Mum and was struggling to get the detail of her brooch down in time for the end of the sitting. Why don’t you take it home with you, Her Maj suggested! Is it insured, my Grandpa asked? Oh, we couldn’t possibly afford to insure it, she replied… (He took it home anyway and my Gran slept with it under her pillow to keep it safe.)

My Great Grandfather was the painter Ernest Walbourn, and we discuss the many unfinished paintings of his we have in our house during this section of the podcast. Here’s the main himself at work - one of the things I like about this picture is he’s literally doing the thing we discuss in the episode: 70% of the painting is done to completion, but the sky is entirely untouched, a literal blank canvas.

Ernest Walbourn at work, probably in the early 1920s

The other part of Ernest lineage which did NOT reach me is sporting prowess: he was in fact invited to join the Olympic shooting team, and my parents have a letter from an Olympic committee member reassuring colleagues that Ernest was a gentleman, despite being an artist…

In particular we talk about one painting on my wall, of a tree, unfinished, which I absolutely loved Helena’s expert take on. Here’s the pic.

The unfinished tree painting, left

After listening to the podcast my Mum got in touch to say this was the very tree under which my grandparents got engaged! Lovely stuff.

39:30 - 52:17 My top tip for visiting galleries and museums

If you only take one thing… Steal my Te Papa techniques as described in this section! Some more on the New Zealand Lianza experience, including images of the museum in its glorious emptyness, here. Plus more on the Latvian children’s art / library strategy here.

We also discuss UX methodologies, and the benefits of having a curated art collection on campus.

52:18 - end My favourite art on campus

I insisted they ask me this question - what is my favourite art on campus? I talked about two pieces. First of all Beyond and Within by Joanna Mowbray.

Pic via the Art@York - click to see the original on Facebook

The piece I picked as my favourite was the Singing Stone by Gordon Young. I mentioned in the podcast the Alumni post on Insta of Helena describing the piece, and the YouTube shorts version is embedded below:

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If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading! I absolutely loved being on the podcast, so thank you Helena and Gary for having me.

The Public Library Brand: refuge, joy, connection, purpose, and expansion

In my Strategic Marketing training, we conduct an exercise around the library brand. It begins with a key question: what do you want your library's brand to be? What would the ideal sum-total of everyone’s perceptions of your organisation amount to? Or to put it more simply: what do you want people to say about you when you’re not in the room?

From there we explore how to assess your library’s current reputation, and then talk about all the great marketing strategies you can use to influence and shape your brand, steering it closer to that ideal vision. It’s always one of my favourite workshop activities because I love people hearing the sets of words and phrases people come up with.

Some brand aspirations are easy to work with, from a marketing perspective. If your ideal brand is ‘a place of learning and support’ you can quickly come up with a strategy for the kinds of services you’ll promote and the target audiences for those efforts. Other aspirations are more challenging (though no less valuable because of that): for example ‘innovative and exciting’ or ‘inclusive for all’ are NOT going to become your brand on their own. Achieving these requires a deliberate effort to shift perceptions and actively demonstrate in the marketing content how inclusive, welcoming, or innovative your institution truly is.

I’ve never seen such a fabulous brand to aspire to than the one public libraries already have, revealed in some new research by the New York Public Library.

Let’s start with the quote given to Book Riot, which gives this post its title, from Daphna Blatt, the NYPL’s Senior Director of Strategy & Public Impact, who says the research shows that:

“...library usage positively contributes to externally validated measures of well-being. Our research found that patrons experience refuge, joy, connection, purpose, and expansion through their library use.”

— Daphna Blatt

Wow. WOW! It’s just such a fabulous set of terms. And what an exciting challenge to try and build that into a marketing campaign. You could take them together, or work on them one at a time over a period of months - the great thing about it is you’d be building an evidence-based piece of marketing. The research tells us how libraries make people feel, and our job as marketers is to convey that in different ways to different audiences - including, of course, potential new users.

And in fact, those terms are just five of twenty identified by NYPL, across three stages detailed in the full report which you can view here [PDF]. Here’s a screenshot of the page I was most excited about (with as much alt-text as the system allows):

Click the pic to open the full NYPL report in a new tab

It’s a very positive piece of research at a time when positivity can be pretty scarce around public libraries: I’d urge you to read the report, share it with colleagues, and then run with it as a way to inform your library marketing in 2025.

Public Library Social Media in a Post-Twitter World

Last month I went to Kilkenny to present at the Library Association of Ireland’s Public Libraries Conference. The short version of this post is, it was a fantastic conference; libraries in Ireland get a lot more support from their government than British ones and it SHOWS in their confidence and morale and general fabulousness; and I uploaded my presentation to Slideshare if you’d like to see it:

Public library social media in a post-Twitter world from Ned Potter

I was running some training online for Irish public libraries earlier in the year, and I said jokingly (or, half-jokingly…) ‘as great as this is, if anyone would like to invite me back to Ireland I’d love to come!’ and Mary Murphy from the LAI took me at my word! I’m so glad she did because the whole thing was a great experience.

It reminded me of when I ran workshops in Australia - when a nation truly values its libraries, the whole conversation around them is just different. It starts from a place of positivity, and moves forward from there into creativity and inclusivity - the capacity for those things is greater because the librarians aren’t having to be on the defensive and trying to justify their existence. Someone said to me on the coffee break ‘whichever party is in Government, we always get support’ - can you imagine that being said at a British conference? It was lovely to visit such a place and a get a sort of library-serotonin boost…

The other great this about this whole trip was that my wife Alice could come with me, and in fact - for the first time ever - she saw me talk at an event. It was odd to mix these two worlds, and I had to consciously not think about her presence while I was presenting so I didn’t get in my own head. Whenever I do conference talks I always ask the audience to speak to each other about a key part of the topic, around ten minutes in - it turns everyone in the room into active participants and raises the energy levels all round; I love it and whole-heartedly recommend it to presenters. I didn’t warn Alice about it though, so she found herself talking to the librarian in the seat next to her about things she had no context for or interest in - lovely stuff…

On the way home we diverted into the Wicklow Mountains and it was beautiful.

Thanks to Mary and everyone at the LAI who invited me, and to all the conference deletagates I chatted to and who asked great questions during my talk. I loved the whole thing - I hope someone will have me back over in 2025!