JONESBORO — A billboard on U.S. 63 near the edge of town that promotes the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library spoils the ending of a Harry Potter novel for passers-by.
The library’s Facebook page, with a picture of comedian George Carlin urging children to investigate what they read, spawned a discussion about Carlin’s political views.
A video series produced by the library that features a fictional comedic library staff shows its characters drunk at a genealogical event, battling zombies and spoofing a popular Brad Pitt movie.
And posters on the library’s bookshelves poke fun at popular culture such as books, movies and entertainment.
It’s all an attempt by the Jonesboro library’s technology staff to make the library seem less nerdy.
“We’re selling the library as an idea, not just a particular service it offers,” said Ben Bizzle, the library’s director of technology. “We want to make the library relevant in the community.
“We’re still chopping wood and carrying water every day,” he said of the routine of promoting basic services of the library. “But we’re also challenging every concept of what the library is supposed to do.”
Bizzle is using a marketing strategy more akin to business in promoting the library.
He acquired a business savvy while working as the director of information technology at the MississippiCounty Hospital in Osceola for seven years before moving to the Craighead County Jonesboro Library nearly four years ago.
“At the hospital, we built an information infrastructure,” he said. “Here, we utilize the skill set of what we have, rather than keeping things working the same way.”
The strategy is working well for the library.
Since aggressively beginning the campaign earlier this year, the library has seen a 150 percent increase in materials checked out compared with last year, going from 12,000 in 2011 to 30,000 in 2012. The library has also seen a 100-percent increase in daily foot traffic in a year - from an average of 1,000 visitors a day in 2011 to 2,000 a day in 2012.
“We’re just telling people they can get a lot of value from the library,” Bizzle said.
Bizzle uses elements of the Internet - the same thing that has hurt other libraries by offering alternative entertainment sources - to promote Jonesboro’s facility.
He uses Facebook to promote events at the library. He also added an application so iPhone users could check the library’s inventory, and he promotes the library on Twitter and other social media services.
He’s selling the brand of the library, not an individual aspect of it.
“If we can get people talking about our library - it works,” he said.
Some of the campaigns have people talking about its edgy, risky humor.
In the video promoting the library’s genealogy night, an employee of the fictitious Crooked Valley Regional Library staff pours alcohol into a punch bowl set up for patrons. As a sarcastic nod to adventure films, the actor who spikes the drink, library employee Joe Box stealthily rolls over a small desk rather than walk around it.
As the video progresses, the visitors become inebriated. Some dance on tables, others pass out. In one scene, Craighead County Jonesboro Public librarian Phyllis Burkett is depicted as kissing another employee in a drunken tryst.
Another video spoofs a black-and-white instructional video about being a good librarian.
Yet another features an employee using cliched pickup lines to attract women to promote the library’s speed dating event.
All of the videos can be found on the library’s You-Tube page at www.youtube.com/publiclibrary1.
“We need to recognize the library as a ‘cool’ place to go,” Burkett said. “We need to realize there are changes ahead. We don’t want to alienate our base of support by reducing what they use and like, but we also need to reach out toa new market.
“Sometimes Ben goes too far with his ideas and we’ve run him back a few times,” she said. “But other times, we say, ‘Can you push it further ?’”
One video Bizzle produced is a takeoff on Fight Club, a film starring Brad Pitt about a group of people who secretly enjoy fighting each other. Bizzle’s video is entitled Book Club, and slightly alters some of the film’s scenes, replacing the fights with book readings.
He even uses the same song - “Where is My Mind” by the Pixies - that was predominate in the film.
The video, which also can be found on YouTube.com, was so popular that Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, posted it on his website.
“The image through the years is that librarians are old maids, maternally stern people who want quiet and order and who don’t want people touching their books on the shelves,” said Arkansas State Librarian Carolyn Ashcraft. “That’s old school. We don’t go around ‘shushing’ people in libraries anymore.
“If we want to keep the library continuing on after the old generation retires, we need to make it more young,” she said.
“It is edgy,” she said of Bizzle’s marketing ideas. “The first time I saw Phyllis [Burkett] in the video, I said, “That’s Phyllis?’ But if you take it all with a grain of salt, you see the entertainment of it and it gets the message across.”
It’s all done with a relatively small budget. The library’s annual budget is $2.9 million. The technology department has an $80,000 budget a year.
Bizzle’s campaign has drawn national attention in library circles.
A photo of the U.S. 63 billboard about the Harry Potter novel, which reads “Spoiler Alert! Dumbledore dies on page 596,” has been featured on the Internet on several websites.
Bizzle recently spoke about the marketing campaign at a library conference in Monterey, Calif., and is scheduled to talk in Washington D.C., Seattle and Chicago next year.
“We want to be an example for other libraries,” he said. “Some libraries have lost their way. We’re willing to adapt to what the community wants.
“Libraries are no longer just buildings with books,” he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 11/26/2012