Programming and Publicity on a Shoestring Budget Denise Birkhoff Marysville Public Library

Marysville’s Adult SRP History We’ve offered an adult SRP since 2004 Our numbers have steadily increased since then We had almost 500 participants last year, with 137 adults finishing the program (they read at least 8 books) All the money we do have to spend on the program ($300) is spent on prizes and guest speakers

Find Something that Works We found a great SRP formula four years ago and have stuck to it with minor tweaks each year. Each adult fills out a drawing slip for each book they read during our SRP and put it in the jar. Every Monday, we draw names from the jar and let the winners choose their prize when they arrive (first come, first pick) We ask for donations from community organizations and businesses in March and usually have enough tickets, gift cards and books to give out five or six prizes each week to adults during our eight week SRP. We only let a person win a weekly drawing once. When they’ve read eight books they get a final prize. They can continue to read and fill out drawing slips.

Publicity Our best publicity is our Youth Services Department. When a Mom comes in with her two kids, the Youth Services team encourages Mom to participate, too. Often, adults associate SRP with kids so they don’t realize there is a program for them. We also send press releases to our local senior organizations. Last year, we put a display in our local copy store’s window to encourage people to participate. Three years ago, we encouraged all of our homebound patrons who receive outreach services to participate. They loved it and most of them still participate! All of those things are FREE!

Programming Our programs sometimes follow the SRP theme, but often they don’t. We usually depend on local people to do our programs for us free of charge. Last summer, we had a well attended program about “How to Pay for College” that a financial aid advisor did free of charge. One of our reference assistants did a “Salvaged Scrapbooks” program with recycled items. A patron taught a watercolor painting class (we paid a minimal amount for supplies). Another patron who is a published author offered to teach a writing class. All these programs were free (except for minimal supplies) and we found them right here at our library.

In Conclusion When you don’t have any money to spend, you just have to get creative with programs and publicity. The best publicity is word of mouth anyway! Make your adult SRP great and the patrons will do the work for you! Our patrons love hands on workshops – crafts, decorating, how-to – so we find someone who loves to do that and ask them to teach a class. I’ve also worked with our local Health Department, OSU Extension Office, Senior Services, Marysville Art League, Union County Humane Society – all these organizations love to talk about what they are good at! Good Luck!