LIBRARYPALOOZA

HOME

AWARDS

SEARCH

ARTICLES

LETTER TO EDITOR

TOOLBOX

Library! Identify Yourself

Lorraine L. Oback

Faced in 1998 with the prospect of having to float a bond measure to fund facilities improvements in the year 2000, San Jose Public Library decided that raising public awareness about library services in our city of 900,000+ residents was an absolute necessity. And that one of the first steps would be establishing an identity for the system so that when asked to support a large bond measure for San Jose Public Library, residents would connect the name with the entire system and not just the main library downtown.

Working under restrictions that prohibited development of a "logo," the library decided that decorating our name in some way would be a defensible compromise. And we wanted the symbol to convey that the library was an active, people-oriented placed for all ages. Once created, we took the resulting symbol and plastered it everywhere; from delivery trucks to mouse pads, from collateral materials to library cards. The library card was an important part of this effort, since we issue upwards of 60,000 a year. We also took the opportunity of adopting a new style of card that included a miniature key ring duplicate. The key ring duplicate served three purposes, in the end:

1. It was a visible reminder to use the library every time the holder used their keys,
2. it acted as free advertising when in public view (people are attracted by the bright green color and ask what it is) and
3. it helped to address the ever present problem of people forgetting to bring their library card (no one leaves home without their keys!).

Developing and propagating the symbol was the first step in a journey that ultimately paid off in passage of the largest bond measure for a single public library system in U.S. history by well over the 2/3 majority required.

Lorraine Oback is Director of Marketing Communications for the San Jose (CA) Public Library
(408) 277-4822