 Welcome. Thank you for joining us today for our TechSoup for Libraries webinar. My name is Crystal and I will be your host. Today we are going to talk about Outside the Lines which is a national campaign for libraries. Specifically we are going to share ways that you can leverage social media to make the most of your Outside the Lines campaign. We have a very special guest joining us to share her expertise on this topic and I will introduce her in just a moment. But first I have a few announcements to share. We will be using the ReadyTalk platform for our meeting today. Please use the chat in the lower left corner to send questions and comments to the presenters. We will be tracking your questions throughout the webinar and we will answer them at the designated Q&A section at the end. All of your chat comments will only come to the presenters, but if you have comments or ideas to share, we will forward them back out with the entire group. 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We have someone from TechSoup live tweeting this event, so please join us in the conversation there. TechSoup Global is dedicated to serving the world's nonprofit organizations and libraries. TechSoup was founded in 1987 with a global network of partners. We connect libraries and nonprofits to technology, resources, and support so that you can operate at your full potential, more effectively deliver your programs and services, and better achieve your mission. TechSoup has helped to distribute over 14 million software and hardware donations to date through our product donation program. We offer a wide range of software, hardware, and services, including software like Microsoft Office and refurbished computers. For more information about TechSoup product donations or services, please visit TechSoup.org and click on Get Products and Services. TechSoup for Libraries addresses the specific technology needs of public libraries. On that website, you can find blog posts, library spotlights, and sign up for our monthly newsletter. We collect and share stories of libraries that are using technology in creative and innovative ways to meet the needs of their communities. To stay up to date on TechSoup for Libraries news and events, be sure to visit us at TechSoupforLibraries.org. If you have a story to share about your library, click the link that says Tell Us. We'd love to hear from you. Now for today's webinar, we are joined by Erica Grossman, Creative Lead and Social Media Guru in the Innovations Department at Anything Libraries in Adams County, Colorado. She is also part of the creative team that launched Outside the Lines and is currently on the planning committee. I'm delighted to have her join us today to talk about social media and Outside the Lines. My name is Crystal Shim, and I'll be your host for today's webinar. Assisting us with chat and Twitter, we have Ginny Mies and Becky Wiegand from the TechSoup team. And again, we'll be on Twitter using be at TechSoupforLibs handle. During today's webinar, Erica will share a brief history of Outside the Lines, some examples of Outside the Lines in action at libraries across the U.S. and some specifics of successful Outside the Lines campaigns. We will have time for questions at the end of the webinar, so we invite you to send in your questions as they arise, and we'll keep track of them. Again, this webinar is being recorded, and all of the slides, resources, and materials will be included in the archive of this webinar, which you will receive within a few days. Now we wanted to know a little bit about your knowledge of Outside the Lines coming into today's webinar, so tell us. Have you heard of Outside the Lines prior to today's webinar? You can select your response here and click Submit, and then you'll see a summary of all of the responses, and I'll give you a few moments to think about this and to find the correct response. Perhaps you're very familiar with Outside the Lines, and you're looking for an update today. I see a few of you fit into that category. Maybe you are familiar, but you really want to learn more. I see quite a few people responding there, and I'm actually just delighted to see that at this point over 70%, and we'll see how that holds as everyone submits their responses, but right around 70% it seems, are hearing about Outside the Lines for the first time, and we are just delighted to be able to share this with you today. So I'll give you just a few more seconds to put in that response, and glad to hear that we have so many new people joining us. Now whether you are new to Outside the Lines, or you're very familiar with it, we do hope that you'll walk away with some new ideas today that you'll be able to implement if you're trying it out this year, and you're looking at doing some of these things in your library. Okay, I'll go ahead and close down this poll now in 3, 2, and 1. Again, just under 70% here for the first time to learn about Outside the Lines and the remainder having some experience and a few of you isn't being very familiar with it, so welcome today. All right, we do have just one more poll because we'd like to know if you are participating in Outside the Lines, or if you plan to, or you might not know, and for this poll you can actually submit multiple selections. So you may have participated in the past, but you also may be planning or not sure if you're going to participate this year, so it's great to see. And I'm not surprised to see a large number of those of you not sure since a large percentage of you were hearing about this for the first time during this webinar, so it would be interesting to see what your responses are afterwards, but we wanted to see coming in where your intent was, so it's good to see. Now I see that some of you say you're not planning to participate, and I know there may be a variety of reasons. Some of you may be joining from a non-library organization. I know we have a wide range of people in the audience today, so that's okay too. And it's great to see that a few of you actually have participated in the past as I see these responses coming in. So I'll give you just a few more seconds to respond here as well, and I'm sure this will certainly inform Erica's presentation as she goes forward to know where everyone here is in the audience today. So thank you so much for joining us, those of you that are new again. And we'll go ahead and close the poll in 3, 2, and 1. All right, so we'll go ahead and get started now. Again, I hope you have a few things that you walk away with whether you're new to Outside the Lines or you've had quite a bit of experience, but right now it's time for me to hand over the controls to Erica who's going to tell us all about Outside the Lines. So Erica? Thank you, Crystal. Good morning or good afternoon depending on where you are joining us from. I'm so glad to be here and to see so many folks, and it's great that we have some folks that are not familiar with Outside the Lines today because I am going to give you a little bit of backstory before I get into the social media aspect. So what is Outside the Lines? Three years ago, library directors from across the front range here in Colorado met during an annual retreat. And one of the leading topics during that retreat was shifting the perceptions of libraries. There was a sense of urgency that came out of that meeting that was rooted in the fact that we can no longer wait to address this topic. We don't want to have to continue to answer the question of why libraries are still relevant when the Internet exists. From that meeting came the idea of doing a statewide marketing campaign to help bring awareness to libraries all across the state of Colorado. The idea was to create something beautiful and really impactful, but as discussions evolved there was a realization that we could have the best campaign in the world, but if the experience that an individual had walking into a library didn't match the campaign, then the whole thing would just fall flat. After further consultation, the group tasked with leading this project decided that perhaps it was time to rethink the tool. And out of that came Outside the Lines. Outside the Lines is a week-long celebration demonstrating the creativity and innovation happening in libraries. This year it is September 11th through 17th which is just around the corner. And when a library or organization decides to participate in Outside the Lines, they sign up and commit to doing at least one event or campaign that meets the following criteria. Number one, it gets people thinking and talking about libraries in a different way. You know, we really want to shift those perceptions that exist out there and we need to change the image that comes to mind when people think about their local library. We want to make sure that it's up to date and that it's modern and that it's relevant. They also agree to showcase a library out in the community as well as in the library. This criteria is a really important one. We want to make sure that we're meeting people out in the community where they live, work, play, or maybe even where they commute. We can't just sit back and expect people to walk through our doors. We encourage people to do something that highlights how their library is relevant to people's lives. Also something that represents your local community. So thinking back on why it's important to have the experience of a campaign match the experience of a library, every library is different and every library serves a different community. So it's really important for a participating library to make sure that this campaign works for them and for their community. Our next criteria is that it's active versus passive, so something that really gets folks engaged. Also something that's unexpected as well. When we say extraordinary, remember that this doesn't have to be a big flashy event. Sometimes the little things can be extraordinary as well and they can also have the largest impact. And last but not least, most importantly, something that is fun. You and your staff need to be having a great time in order to pass that enthusiasm about libraries along to the public. Outside the line should never feel like a chore or a task or anything like that. It should feel like something that's fun and new and different. So in 2014, we launched our inaugural year of Outside the Line. Originally our goal was to have 20 Colorado libraries sign up to participate but we wound up with 178, which was really incredible. And it was libraries from all across the United States and Canada. We saw a really strong state library participation. And state libraries were really powerful and instrumental in helping us get off the ground and get the word out about Outside the Line. So if you are listening today and you work with the state library association, we strongly recommend that you go to the press room at getoutsidethelines.org and check out some of the recent webinars that we've hosted that are specifically designed for state library associations. Those are really informative. We also saw participation from academic libraries including some big names like University of Texas and Rutgers and Virginia Tech. We also saw endorsements from outside the library community including Author Collide Custler, Every Library, Mango Languages, and The Evolve Project. In 2015, we continued and we grew even stronger. We had 278 libraries including libraries of Puerto Rico, Australia, and what I think is one of the most interesting libraries we've had. We actually had the library that serves the family members at the Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay participate. They were our first and so far our only military library, but I think it just really shows how malleable this campaign really is. Whether you're a large urban library or a small rural library or you're academic or you're military, there's a way for libraries of all shapes and sizes to participate. I know a lot of you haven't heard of Outside the Lines before. We do have webinars that you can watch that kind of go into more detail, but you may be asking yourself, okay, so what does this campaign actually look like? I wanted to briefly share a couple examples of Outside the Lines in action. I will start today with Cedar Rapids Public Library out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. For their Outside the Lines participation, they created these OTL coasters and distributed them all over town, so at coffee shops, restaurants, breweries, cafes, all over. They invited everyone to turn that coaster into a piece of art, whether that was just coloring the coaster or maybe drawing something different on it or completely transforming it. When you were finished transforming your coaster, Cedar Rapids asked people to return the coasters to the library either in person or by using one of their designated book drops. And then they used those coasters to create public art pieces that they put on display. I thought this was a really creative way to get people talking about the library in a new and different way, and also a great example of finding a new way to get out into the community while also doing something at the library. All right. This is the Los Alamos County Library System from Los Alamos, New Mexico. And they participated in Outside the Lines in a number of different ways, but one of my favorite events that they had was they hosted a storytime with their local Roller Derby team. So as part of that, they invited the community to join them at a local Roller Derby bout where team members and referees read stories to kids. And again, this is a great example of really getting out into your community, doing something unexpected, and getting people talking about the library in a new way. If you are interested in registering, we encourage you to visit GetOutSideTheLines.org and do so today considering that Outside the Lines is just around the corner. Again, it's September 11th through 17th of this year. And again, I want to reiterate, since we have so many folks who are just learning about Outside the Lines for the first time, there are great general overview webinars that go into a little bit more detail and give more examples about some of the different ways that libraries have participated. So let's talk social media. Outside the Lines is a grassroots campaign. One of the ways that we've been able to see OTL grow nationally and even internationally is by tracking the GetOTL hashtag. We use that hashtag GetOTL across all of our social platforms. We have an official Twitter account as well as an official Facebook account. And we also actually have a Facebook group for sharing ideas. And I'll get into that a little bit more at the end and share that URL with you at the end of this webinar. Lots of people use Instagram to support their campaigns. Again, no matter where you are, we use that same hashtag and encourage everybody else to do the same. Social media and the use of that hashtag really has helped us to find out what libraries are doing for their campaign and to help them promote their events through our own networks. You'll notice that the two examples I just shared, the Cedar Rapids Coasters as well as the Los Alamos Library Roller Derby Storytime, those came to us through social media on Instagram and as well as Facebook respectively. We really believe that we are all in this together and social media is a great way to showcase that. Libraries across the country and across the world might be doing things that are totally different or serving totally different communities. But when we all use that same hashtag, we are able to share our stories together and it really speaks to the power of this campaign. We are all facing the same exact challenges when it comes to changing perceptions of libraries, so why not face those challenges together? It may seem sort of like a silly notion on the surface, but using a hashtag really helps us to connect with each other. In addition, we are able to share that inspiration with everyone at the same time and show that libraries are out there, that they are making a difference and that we are doing it together. We provide a lot of resources for participants and that includes a press release template, media advisory templates, more information on how you can contact your local elected officials. But we also have created resources that are specifically designed to be conducive to sharing on your social networks. We've created a series of four prompts and three of these fun acronym graphics that you see here. And we encourage everyone who participates to share these on their social platforms during Outside the Lines. These are designed to get people talking about libraries in fun ways and several of them also contain prompts for the public to share their own library stories or even invite their friends to visit the library during that week of Outside the Lines. With those shareables and those prompts, part of this campaign is encouraging both public figures as well as everyday people to share their library stories. Social media is a great space to make that happen. It's easy, it's accessible to everyone, and here are some of my favorite responses we've received on social media during Outside the Lines from all over. My absolute favorite is up there at the top is all I know is that libraries are hell of fun these days and I could not agree more. Jackie Collins who unfortunately passed away not long after Outside the Lines last year was one of those public figures who signed on board to share her library story. We're still not exactly sure how she found out about the initiative to be honest with you, but this is a great example of a person of influence reaching out and asking her followers to share their own library stories. Using social media and those prompts really helped her. It gave her an easy way to do that and she has a lot of folks that follow her. So these are some of the responses from Jackie's call out both on Facebook and Twitter. I think this is just really powerful stuff to see people from all over who follow Jackie Collins be willing to reach out there and say, yes, I love that you love libraries. I also love libraries. This is one of the shares from that post which saw over 100 shares actually. You'll see that one of the great things about Facebook and social media in general is that ability to easily and quickly share things. So we're having people use their own library story to prompt more people to share their library stories. And really that can spread like wildfire. At the same time that Jackie Collins was posting, we saw a number of other authors jump on that bandwagon like this which is from Iris Johansson who is another author as well as Lori Nelson-Spielman. So when you're looking at social media for your library during Outside the Lines, ask yourself what makes sense for your library? We encourage you to think of specific goals that you might have for your Outside the Lines campaign and then develop something like a strategy that aligns with those initiatives. So maybe you want to reach out to a specific demographic in your community. Maybe you're trying to reach more young people. Maybe you're trying to reach new residents and figure out who you want to involve in the library that isn't already using the library and maybe create something targeted specifically for them. I'd like to take a look at some of the specific examples of how libraries have used social media to improve their Outside the Lines experience. And I'm going to start with Florence Lauderdale Public Library. FLPL is a library in Alabama. It's a smaller library system and we are big supporters of them. Abby Carpenter who I believe is on the webinar is on our OTL committee. So hi Abby. And so for their first Outside the Lines experience they decided to create this FLPL Everywhere campaign. Their goal was to engage younger members of the community via social media and ask them to tell the library where it is out in the community that they read. So they created this FLPL Everywhere hashtag and used it across their social platforms. They also had it on posters and t-shirts and they really used it to promote their campaign, announce where they would be out in the community. And I love these beautiful photos that they created. They used these on their Instagram account and at the time their Instagram account was brand new. So they used this campaign as an effort to specifically increase their presence and their followers on that specific platform. And again another beautiful photo. They now have I think over 375 followers on Instagram. Most of which were gained during that campaign. And again this is a very small library community. So you'll see these beautiful posts they created on Instagram and it highlights all the different places that they were visiting out in the community during Outside the Lines. They also saw an increase in their Facebook engagement. So some of their posts reached 1500 people. Their youth services librarian was very active on Facebook and used that platform to help increase attendance at their pop-up storytime. Sharing with local businesses is a great way to not only reach new audiences and build lasting relationships with people, but it's also a great idea for increasing your social media engagement so that you can really cross-pollinate your posts. If you partner with local businesses there's a strong chance that they also have their own social media feeds and that they would be happy to extend that reach to their own followers and networks. It's really honestly in their best interest to promote their relationship with the library out in the community. And I'd love to share a couple of my favorite examples of ways in which folks have done that. The first is Douglas County Public Library here in Colorado. They launched something called the Great Douglas County Routor. And this is a large suburban library system like I said out here in Colorado. And for the past couple of years they've hosted this brew tour. As part of the brew tour you can pick up a brewery passport and then go around and collect stamps at the various breweries across the county. When you've collected all the stamps you can bring the passport back to the library for a commemorative pint class. And in addition to all of this they also host a variety of brew-related events, programs both out in the community as well as inside their library. And in addition they host a naming contest for beers to be brewed by the participating breweries. Really awesome fun cool way to engage with their community and reach new audiences. Social media was a huge part and a key part of implementation. So they launched a Facebook contest for the actual naming of the beer and collaborated with local breweries to make sure that they were also heavily involved on social media as well. It's worthwhile when partnering with local businesses to really reach out in advance and ask them outright if they would be willing to make social media a component of their participation. And to also make sure they have all the materials and information that they need to do so and maybe that includes that getotl hashtag. So what you're seeing right here this is one of the participating breweries on Twitter announcing their participation and announcing their literary beer, the saison also rises which sounds delicious. This is BK's public library outside of Austin which happens to maybe be one of my favorite library names of all time. They partnered with several local businesses to create literary themed offerings at their establishments. So when you ordered these literary themed offerings you received a booklist bookmark and a chance to win prizes back at the library. This is an Instagram post from one of those establishments I believe a local cafe. And then this is another Facebook post from another one of their partners, a local ice cream shop. So as you can see these businesses use social media to promote the campaign on behalf of the library. And they were also using that getotl hashtag which really helps us to create that cohesive experience across the country. We really want to be experiencing this all together at the same time. I want to move on to talk a little bit about some easy ideas for incorporating social into your outside the lens experience and give a couple examples of those ideas in practice. So contests, real time updates, prompts for patrons, these are all very simple ways that you can easily incorporate social into your experience. This is the Orange County Library System in Orlando, Florida. They asked people to snap photos of the library with the getotl hashtag and entered them in as part of a social media contest across their platforms. They had some really fun responses. Somebody pointed out a display case for their Orlando memory project which has to do with their archive of local history. Somebody else found that the old dumbwaiter in the children's library and they found that, snapped a pic of it and commented how it looked like a hobbit's doorway. They had about 14 photos posted to Instagram and tweets from local artists and a local blogger. One of their photos actually also highlighted the fact that Orange County Library System was a part of Art in Odd Places which is a local art project that places art installations around Orlando. So this wound up being a really cool way to use social media to connect with a totally different community which was their art community. I love this example. I feel like it was really targeted. This is a tweet as part of that contest. It got picked up by something called Central Florida Top 5. They wound up tweeting heavily during Outside the Lines and they have a really strong following. So they have over 11,000 followers. So this is a really great example of very strong reach that can happen when you create contests and create a kind of directed campaign. Social media is also a really, really, really great idea for any sort of real-time updates. We see a lot of folks doing things like pop-up story times as part of Outside the Lines where they just kind of surprise people out in the community. If you're doing anything like that, it's really important to let people know where you're at in real-time. This is Pell City Library. Again, this is another small library system in Alabama. We love them. They are one of our strongest representatives and they've done so many cool things with these campaigns. I wanted to share this example specifically because it's the only one I found so far that actually used Periscope. In this instance, Pell City was hosting a pop-up story time at their local Chick-fil-A. They invited a local child photographer to join and she took these beautiful photos of the kids during the story time and shared them. But as part of that, she also decided to blog about the event and she used Periscope in order to provide a real-time video update of what was going on. She invited folks to join them if they could. And then she also used it as a platform to express her support of the library and encourage everybody to get Outside the Lines and visit their local library. Another easy way to incorporate social media into your Outside the Lines campaign is to use, again, use those prompts for your community. This was at the core of Charlotte Mecklenburg. They're in North Carolina. They used the campaign last year and they really, as part of that campaign, they really wanted to show their value in the community by prompting their patrons to share their library stories. So using some of the marketing language and that getotl hashtag, they took to social media across their various platforms and they asked folks to share their library stories. They received some really great responses. And some of those community voices and responses, they wound up turning into really powerful videos. And they shared those videos across their social networks like Facebook, like the one you see right here. And it was really to get the word out in a meaningful way about the why. Why the library is important, and how the library is more relevant than ever. Which is really what we're all about in this campaign is shifting those perceptions. One really cool thing is that this social media campaign went on to win a Markham Award, which is a National Marketing and Communications Award. So a big congrats to Charlotte Mecklenburg on a successful and powerful getotl campaign. There are some really simple best practices that might help you when you are developing or when you're trying to figure out your own campaigns. My first suggestion would just be to keep things simple. Sometimes there's so many things we want to accomplish and the inclination might be to make free hashtags for three different things or three different events. And I would advise against that. The great thing about social media is it's ease of use. And if you make the contest too complicated or you maybe pose a question that's a little too cerebral or you maybe create five different hashtags for the same thing, it might be a deterrent for engagement or participation. The next is to find staff members that are engaged and excited. If you remember when we talked about Florence Lauderdale Public Library and their FLPL Everywhere campaign, they had a youth librarian who was really excited and engaged on social media. And she was able to leverage that excitement to connect with the community. So even if you're a very small library without a designated marketing person, there's got to be someone on your staff who's excited, who's engaged with social media. I would recommend tapping them as a resource when you're strategizing. The folks most familiar might have some of the best ideas and some of the best inspiration that can really help you focus in on the campaigns. Don't forget that you can use tagging and hashtags depending on which platform you're using to really get the attention of people in a specific area. So for example, on Instagram you might draw new folks in by tagging locations up in the community or by adding your city's hashtag in the mix. I would also definitely advise to go about this in the right way, which is to say to make sure on places like Instagram or Twitter that you're not or Facebook that you're not tagging businesses inappropriately that don't have any idea what you're up to. It's very much so worthwhile to communicate with folks in advance so that they don't feel bombarded or pressured. We always want to be mindful that we're not harassing anyone. Rather, we really want people to be excited about what it is that we're doing and the role that the community can play. Also, it might be worthwhile to set specific goals and track statistics. This might give you some ammunition that you might need to convince your coworkers about this campaign and how it's a great idea. But it also might give you a stronger sense of direction in terms of which direction you want to go in for your specific campaign. Each year we survey participants about social media, and we survey our participants every year, and we've received some really strong feedback from those that do track social media. For those libraries we receive feedback that you see a really sharp increase in engagement during that Outside the Lines Week, which, again, is a great way to make sure that we're on the right track and we are reaching new people. Speaking of stats, I would love to bring it back to Douglas County Public Library and their beer tour. Haley Semuelinos, who also helps out with the National Social Media Campaign for Outside the Lines, was willing to share some of their specific digital results. And right now you are looking at one of the winners for their Facebook contest for naming one of the library brews. So that contest received many, many entries. In fact, they saw a 189% increase from the previous year. Remember that they factored Facebook and Twitter into their original plans. And as part of that they posted 21 Facebook posts and 29 tweets. The reach they saw was really impressive. 71 shares, a Facebook reach of 26,915 people, and on Twitter a potential reach of 23,712 people. And that's just really impressive stuff. But remember these digital results really help support the anecdotal results. I love this quote from Haley about the real emotional impact of their campaign. She says, two 20-something young men ran into the library to get their pint glasses one day. They told our frontline staff that they hadn't been in the library since they were children, but that they might have to rethink that because they didn't know that we were so cool. And I think this quote really, really speaks to what Outside the Lines is all about. It's about shifting perceptions of libraries in new and creative ways. And in this case Douglas County was able to reach a brand new audience that they hadn't realized just how the library had changed in recent years. So engaging with them out in the community, they were able to get them back into the library and really change their preconceived notions of what a library is. So here's some information. Again we highly encourage you to go to outsidethelines.org and register if you haven't and you'd like to and you've been meaning to. From there you can also check out our resources in the press room including those webinars I mentioned previously. You're welcome to get in touch with us via email if you have questions. But I also really wanted to take a moment to highlight the Facebook group which is different than the Facebook page. The Facebook page is designed to be more of a public facing space for Outside the Lines. But on that space we do share what libraries across the world are doing during OTL. But the Facebook group, and I've got the URL right there, is a space where OTL participants or prospective participants can connect with each other and share ideas and inspiration. There's a lot of great stuff that goes on in that group. So I really encourage you, even if you just have more questions or if you're looking for ideas and maybe you're not even sure about participating yet, I really encourage you to go to that space to connect with some other folks and get some new ideas. And so with that I will hand it back over to Crystal and just say, thank you for letting me be here today and I hope that you got something out of it that you learned about Outside the Lines. And maybe you got something that you can take back as inspiration for your own social media campaign. Thanks a lot. Great, well thank you Erika for sharing so many different examples. What I love here is that you shared so many different examples not only of what libraries are doing with Outside the Lines, but also with the way they're using social media to engage their communities online and to share what they're doing and maybe even reach new audiences. So I think there's a lot of great ideas there. Now we've also gotten a few questions and right now I would just like to encourage those of you with us today. If you have a question you can just enter it into the chat and we'll take questions now for the next few minutes. And the other thing I just wanted to mention for everyone right now is that all of these slides, I know some of these have a lot of detailed examples and you might be wanting to go back to look at what that hashtag was in a post or what that social media stat was. And all of these slides are going to be included in the archive which will send you within a day or two as soon as we get that archive ready to go along with the recording of the webinar that we're doing right now. So you will get that in your email within the next day or two. So you can access that later. And so just to go back to one of the most important details is that if you are interested specifically in signing up for Outside the Lines, the dates are September 11th through September 17th of this year. And actually this leads us to the first question which I'm going to ask you Erika, looking at that timeline between now and September 11th that's coming up actually rather quickly. We're in the middle of July right now. So how far, this is a question from Twitter and Kristen asked how far in advance should libraries be planning their campaign for Outside the Lines? Hi Kristen, thanks for your question. It's a great one. And you know that really varies from library to library. We like to encourage folks to start earlier. The earlier the better. But you know how easy it is for time to get away from you. And you know I've certainly experienced that in my own Outside the Lines campaign here at Anything. And I would say ideally it would be great to really have at least maybe some brainstorming ideas by June. But it's definitely here in July not too late to come up with something especially you know like we said in the beginning sometimes the simplest ideas can be the most effective. And sometimes those simple ideas don't take too much brainstorming or they don't take too much time away from you to implement something great. So really it's going to vary library to library depending on your size, your staff, your resources. But I do recommend that earlier the better. So if you're just hearing about this for the first time right now and you're excited about it know that there is definitely still time to put something together. And I would join that Facebook group as well and maybe ask folks if they can share any of their sort of last minute OTL ideas. We definitely get folks that have signed on in late August and even early September who have come up with something. If anything just something simple and fun that they can do on a Saturday or a weekday just one event to get them out there in their community. So there's definitely still time and we have some ideas too on how to make the most of that time as well. We really encourage, we've got some really great brainstorming activities that we use regularly that I think can really kind of help kickstart your whole brainstorming process. And those are available on the webinars and we'd be happy to share those in that Facebook group as well. So thanks for your question. Great, excellent answer. Now we did get a question just to reiterate what it is that's happening September 11th through the 17th is outside the lines and if you maybe joined the webinar later had to step away. Erica would you just give us end of the webinar recap on what outside the lines is and what's happening from September 11th through the 17th? Yes, absolutely. So outside the lines is a week long celebration that demonstrates the creativity and innovation happening in libraries. And as part of this what we do is we ask libraries or other organizations you don't have to be a library to participate. If you're just a supporter of libraries you can find a way to participate as well. But we ask you to go to GetOutsideLines.org and once you're there and you sign up you agree to do something either one event or at least one campaign or something similar that really gets people talking about libraries in a different way. And as part of that I'm going to go ahead and go back to one of these slides. But we have a strong set of criteria that will kind of help you guide your outside the lines experience and I can run through them just real quick without too much more explanation. But these are the criteria real quick. So get people thinking and talking about libraries in a new way, is out in the community as well as in the library, highlights how your library is relevant to people's lives, represents your community, it's active, really about engagement, extraordinary and unexpected and something that's just fun. So libraries can sign up, organizations can sign up. And we just really like to use that week as a cohesive time where libraries from all across the world can really get out there and shift perceptions of libraries together. Great. And we will share a link to that web page again in the chat which answers the question someone was asking, where can we access the webinars for more outside the lines ideas? And that is on the outside the lines website. So we will show that link again in the chat. Now somebody asked, this is maybe just a general question about the planning. Is this consistently in the second week of September, is there some significance to that or does it move around the calendar from year to year? So so far it has been that second week in September. This is our third year and we've always kept it that week. That was just when we decided on it that was the week that came to mind and we've kept it consistent ever since. I don't think that there are any plans on changing that anytime soon, but you never know. And also I'd like to note that you don't have to feel confined to that week as well. We've seen libraries get so excited about an idea that they want to make it a month long initiative. So don't feel like you have to keep it confined to just that week. Great, great. Now in terms of some of the planning, I know for many people that work in libraries, social media is just one of many things that they do. Not every library has a communications department or a person dedicated to social media. So can you give some sense of if you only have a little bit of time to work on social media can you still use that to your advantage in some way? And can you still approach outside the lines? And maybe how do you talk to your administration or your director about getting some buy-in on this type of project? So yeah, that's a really great question and one we hear sometimes. Aside from the social media part, I wanted to say that in terms of engaging staff and getting some buy-in, that's something we do address on one of those other webinars so I would really invite folks to go back and listen. In terms of social media, I know that we're all busy. Most libraries don't have just one specific person in charge of social media. But one of the reasons that we created and have this central campaign is so that we could provide easy resources to folks. And that includes again those resources, those shareable badges. We have some language that you can use. We welcome you to share the languages and the posts that we've put together for you to make it a little bit easier. And in terms of finding more buy-in from administration, I think one thing that's really great is maybe forming a team, maybe finding those folks that are truly excited and engaged on social media and having them come together. And you can really work toward your goals as a team. And I think another key thing would be to sort of share some examples of the types of successes that other libraries have seen by participating. We're happy to share some of those with you, but you're welcome to also take a look on the press room. We've seen lots of libraries get great media coverage out of their outside lines experience. And I think that can be really beneficial in pointing to those positive results. And again, it's also worth asking why not? What do we have to lose by getting out there and trying something new? So yeah, that would be my advice. But again, I highly recommend to folks who are really more curious about that buy-in to go back and watch some of the webinars that we've already posted, get outsidelines.org. Excellent, excellent. Now is there any way on the website to see what other libraries have signed up? Is that publicly available? Somebody mentioned on Twitter that they were interested in seeing if their library had been involved in the past. So is there any way to know that? Yes, so we don't have a way right now of showcasing who was involved in the past. But if you go to getoutsidelines.org and you scroll down, it lists 2016 Participating Organization and Organizations and shows a little map. Right below that, it says 132 Participating Organizations. That's how many folks have already signed up this year. And you can click to show the complete list. And that is separated by state. So you can go ahead and check to see if your library is participating this year. And that's an easy way to do it. And it's also really cool to see how far reaching this is and to look at that map. And when you sign up, your library's organization will be added to this and also pop up on that map. Great. Now kind of an interesting question that came in from Alicia in the chat. Do you deal with creating social media code of ethics for employees getting involved in this, maybe using their personal accounts or using library accounts but managed by many different staff members? So any types of social media codes or policies? No, that's a great question. We don't have a code or a list of policies about how folks can interact. That's something we definitely leave up to the library organizations. Every organization is different. I think it's probably a great idea to enact a code but we don't have any sort of centralized code. I know I use a lot of my personal accounts and sharing outside the lines as well between. But I would say that would be at the discretion of the library. Great. And is that the sort of question that one might ask in the Facebook group to see if other libraries participating? Would that be a good use of the Facebook group? That would be an excellent use of the Facebook group. Great. So Alicia, perhaps maybe if you want to join that Facebook group and ask that question there, other libraries might speak up looking for examples of what other libraries are doing that use policies or code of ethics for social media. You might find that there. That's a great question. All right. And then another question that came in was just out of curiosity. You shared a lot of examples today that were out on social media using the GetOTL hashtag. Did you get permission to share those in this webinar today or are you just giving credit and trusting that because they were participating? I think that's a very interesting question to ask given that when we put something out on social media it is kind of out there for everybody. So how did you handle that today, Erica? Yeah, so we chose some very public examples. And we have been in pretty near-constant, well maybe not constant, we have been in a lot of contact with the folks who are participating in outside the lines. And when we see these great examples we do ask if we can share them. I've been reaching out to a couple organizations and libraries who have shared these things and asked for more details. So when you saw very specific details those were directly from the libraries themselves. I definitely asked them about that. I wasn't just sharing their shares with the world. But that is a really great question. And this campaign is really built around sharing it's a social campaign. So we go out of our way to make sure that we can stay in touch with these libraries and make sure that we are representing them well. Great, great. And it is such an excellent opportunity to get your library's successes and activities out into the world and a nice campaign to be a part of. So that was actually the person that commented, it might be an off-topic question but I thought it was worth asking because it is really putting some library activity out on a national stage of that social media. So this question is very interesting and it might be a hard one to answer. So I'm actually going to see if anybody in the chat wants to share ideas as well. As many of us are aware within the last week there is a new game app sensation taking the nation which is called Pokemon Go. And if you haven't heard of that yet you can look on the Internet to find out more. But the question which I think is actually a bit of a suggestion, is there some way since many libraries are being tagged as poking on gyms or poke stops, is there some way to leverage that as part of the campaign? And what's interesting here is in many of the other co-branding types of partnerships you've talked about you're actually working directly with the partner. The breweries for example are a local coffee shop, a local ice cream shop. In this case it's something that's a little bit outside of the realm of the library. So Erica I'm going to ask you if you've heard any chatter about this yet with outside the lines with anybody considering leveraging their position as a Pokemon gym to bring in something with outside the lines. And then I'll say if anybody in the audience participating today has an idea or thought to share, you're welcome to share that and we'll try to share this back up with everybody. So I haven't heard specifically of anyone using Pokemon Go as part of their campaign for outside the lines, but again Pokemon Go is fairly new so it might be an idea that's percolating with a few folks. We here at anything actually, almost all of our libraries are either gyms or stops as well. And so we've been thinking about these ideas as well. One great idea that has already popped up, one of our branches is hosting a poke walk where they're getting the kids together really at anybody of all ages who are interested in sort of organizing a walk near all of the nearby stops and then they're going to have a lure party. So I'm on level 6. I don't quite know what a lure party is yet. But I thought that was a really good way of making this part of your library programming and sort of really making the most of the fact that this is so popular right now. I don't know what the popularity of it will be in a month or two months or three months. Maybe it'll taper down. Maybe it'll be even more so. But that was one example that I can think of off the top of my head, but I definitely haven't heard anyone talk about it for outside the line specifically. Great, great. Well I can see there's a little bit of conversation in the chat and somebody has shared a link from one of the ALA divisions to information about Pokemon Go and libraries. And I know there are a lot of resources out there. So you can certainly research that more if you're interested. We are just about out of time for today, but what I would like to do now is just kind of re-emphasize the website and the Facebook group and the contact information you have here in front of you now. And somebody asked, is the Facebook group active year-round? And Erica, I'm just going to ask you to confirm it is active year-round, but I'd say it gets most active once people start signing up to participate. Is that correct? That is absolutely correct. Great, all right. So that Facebook group would be a great place to go to continue this conversation and also using the hashtag GetOTL on Twitter which we've had a few people tweeting on this webinar. So stay on the line for just a few minutes. I've got an announcement but at the end you'll be able to take a survey and let us know what you thought of this webinar. And we really appreciate you spending an hour with us today to hear about outside the lines and social media campaigns. And Erica, I just want to thank you again for sharing all this information with us today. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I was glad to be a part of it. Excellent, all right. So like I said, I have just one announcement before we sign off and you might be interested in two upcoming webinars we have here at TechSoup. Now tomorrow we have a webinar on working with Tech Consultants. I know this is short notice, but that webinar will be recorded in archive for later viewing. So if you want to register for it, you'll automatically get the archive later if that's something you're interested in. Also I would just suggest that you save the date for our next library specific webinar on Wednesday the 27th. And we have two librarians from the Markham Public Library in Canada. They'll be talking about how to cultivate a techno culture in your library. And I am very excited about that topic so I hope that you'll join us. And you can register for those webinars and view archives of past webinars at TechSoup.org. So that is all we have for you today. Thank you again for joining us. And thanks again to Erica for sharing her expertise. I'd also just like to thank ReadyTalk for being our webinar sponsor. And that is also a product donation available on TechSoup.org. If you offer webinars yourself, you might be interested in learning more. Thanks again for joining us and have a great afternoon. Bye-bye.