Public Relations Group discussed taking it further

On Wednesday afternoon, in the Public Relations Discussion Group Meeting facilitated by Linda Fasulo with Collier County Public Library, a group of us met to discuss how public relations works -- or doesn't work -- in our libraries. Our group was comprised of a smart bunch of ladies with some really interesting ideas.

One of the challenges that we brought to the table was that it can be difficult for people outside the PR world to understand what makes something "newsworthy." Although your PR folks are doing their best to keep on top of all the events and other newsworthy happenings, it can be difficult for us to keep track of everything that happens in each location. Therefore, we depend on our colleagues to provide us with information. But sometimes people don't realize that events in their libraries are newsworthy, so they don't know to share it with their PR coordinator.

We suggest offering public relations workshops at future events for people who do not have any sort of public relations background. Not only would this help coworkers select and contribute newsworthy items to their PR colleagues, but it would give smaller libraries that don't have one particular person in charge of PR an opportunity to learn how to handle the media, how to write press releases or calendar advisories, etc.

The PR Discussion Group also talked about getting together on a regular basis, outside of the FLA Conference. If you handle the PR for your library but weren't able to make it to the discussion group, please let Linda Fasulo (lfasulo@collier-lib.org) know if this is something of interest to you. The ladies in the discussion group really liked the idea of having additional PR support outside of our workplace. It was great to be able to bounce ideas off of each other in the discussion group, and it would be fantastic to be able to do so on a more regular basis.