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Your Chapter Awaits

Toledo Lucas County Public Library, Ohio

Advocacy & Awareness | 2020

Innovation Synopsis

To keep up community awareness of the library during COVID-19 closure, we commissioned local artists to create art that reflected ideas important to them with the library as the common thread. We printed posters and stickers to distribute for free at all of our locations and the artists distributed the posters throughout the community.

Challenge/Opportunity

TLCPL relies on a mix of onsite interactions and print materials, website content, social media, earned media, paid media, email and digital signs to stay connected with the community about all of our services and programs. When we closed our locations, we needed to find creative ways to amplify our message while people couldn’t be in our vibrant and welcoming spaces.


Key Elements of Innovation

We worked with a local artist who served as a curator to help identify and commission diverse artists. The first element was a poem which was an anchor for the visual artists. We printed posters and stickers for free distribution at all of our locations. The artists shared on their social media and hung posters at Boys & Girls clubs, coffee shops, restaurants, stores, etc. An outdoor shopping center printed larger posters for display. Instead of sharing our message by ourselves, we had an entire creative team helping us.


Achieved Outcomes

Success is measured by community, media and social engagement. We printed 500 copies of each design as 18-by-24 posters for community displays and 2,000 of each design for 11-by-17 posters and 2-by-3 stickers for free sharing at each branch. To date, more than half of the inventory is gone. All of our local television channels and three newspapers have run the story. Social media reach is 6,779 impressions and 6,199 people reached. We have developed new relationships with artists and local businesses.