[Eg-oversight-board] Increasing Evergreen's visibility in the larger library community

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi all,

I have a proposal I would like to submit to the EOB for discussion at 
this week's meeting.

During a recent meeting of the MassLNC partners, we were discussing ways 
to increase Evergreen's visibility at library conferences. We have been 
very happy with Evergreen and with the way it has grown since we first 
began looking at it as an ILS, and we want to share the good news with 
the rest of the library community.

Proprietary ILS vendors are highly visible at conferences with booths in 
the exhibit hall as well as meetings (or maybe breakfasts or lunches) 
where they showcase their products for users and for potential new 
users. I think we often rely on Equinox to do this work for us at 
conferences, and they do an excellent job of getting the word out about 
Evergreen. However, they are just one piece of a much larger community, 
and they are also highlighting other software (Koha, FulfILLment) in 
addition to Evergreen. The MassLNC partners would like to see a 
community-driven effort to make Evergreen more visible at some of our 
larger library conferences (e.g. American Library Association, Canadian 
Library Association, Public Library Association, etc.).

With this in mind, I would like to propose that the Board 1) establish a 
public relations committee that is primarily responsible for increasing 
the visibility of Evergreen in the library community and 2) start a 
targeted fundraising effort to raise money specifically for those PR 
activities. This effort would fall under the EOB's stated goal to 
"support and facilitate the growth of the international community of 
Evergreen users."

To start us off, C/W MARS, MVLC and NOBLE have offered to put forward 
funds to pay for a table in the exhibit hall at the upcoming ALA annual 
conference in San Francisco. C/W MARS, NOBLE and MassLNC also have a few 
staff members who will be attending the conference and can help staff 
the table, but we would need other volunteers from the community to help 
out . There will be other expenses that will need to be covered 
(signage, handouts, maybe some giveaways), but I think we could keep the 
costs low enough to be covered by fundraising.

Let me know what you think.

My full proposal is below.

PUBLIC RELATIONS PROPOSAL

- This proposal is for the Evergreen Oversight Board to:
    1. establish a fund to be used for increasing the visibility of 
Evergreen in the larger library community;
    2. and form a Public Relations Committee charged with organizing the 
PR activities for which those funds will be used.
- The PR Committee will comprise up to six members of the Evergreen 
community, at least one of whom should be a member of the Evergreen 
Oversight Board.
- The EOB will be responsible for appointing volunteers to the committee.
- The tasks of the committee will include, but not be limited to, 
establishing a presence at library conferences by renting and staffing 
space in the exhibit hall, organizing Evergreen users meetings, and/or 
encouraging presentations from Evergreen community members; issuing 
press releases on noteworthy happenings in the Evergreen community; and 
raising funds for PR activities.
- Any activities that require the expenditure of funds must be approved 
by the EOB.
- The committee must provide regular reports to the EOB by writing to 
the mailing list.

-- 
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier