The UT Libraries is in the midst of a marketing campaign with a very simple message to convey to students: there’s a UT librarian who specializes in your subject area. Sounds simple, right? But try competing with all the distractions of campus life! Our only hope is to play off the popularity and pervasiveness of sports on the UT campus.
We designed a marketing campaign around the theme “Information Is Our Game.” We invited librarians to photo ops at sports venues around campus: the baseball field, soccer field, tennis court, basketball court, football field—even the Volunteer locker room. We photographed librarians in sporty poses, but we are really touting their prowess as information professionals.
We first created “trading cards” (like baseball cards) for each librarian. On one side the librarian is pictured on the court or playing field. The other side features a profile of the librarian’s speciality, research interests, and educational background. Variations on the “Information Is Our Game” tagline convey the pictured librarian’s supporting role to students in the various academic disciplines—”Engineering is your game; information is mine.”
Now we’re making short videos of librarians bravely pitting their athletic prowess against the pros. The (not too subtle) message is: our librarian might not be too great at tennis (skating, mixed martial arts, etc.), but he or she is a whiz at research. The videos run as advertisements before feature presentations on the campus on-demand movie channel and are available on YouTube.
Find the research librarian for your area of study.
Learn more about the librarians participating in the Information Is Our Game campaign.