Running head: REBRANDING A LIBRARY

Re-branding a Library:
Defining and Marketing a New Library Experience
Christina Johnson
Northern Illinois University
ETT 531: Visual Literacy
Dr. Rhonda Robinson
12/1/2014

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Introduction
The East High School Library is almost finished with a long overdue remodel. The
building turns seventy five years old this year and has never had its library updated. In fact, the
space still had all of its original furniture. The remodel was funded by a referendum for a ten
year facilities plan passed two years ago by the community. Now that we are nearing completion,
we feel it is important to re-brand our library to better communicate to students, parents, and
community members what our library is and what services we provide. To communicate this
change to parents, we would like to tap into our student body to help create a marketing
campaign. So much of what happens in marketing a brand is visual, so visual literacy will be
central to the project. Not only will we work with our student creators to discuss the components
of visual literacy.
Purpose Statement
The purpose of this project is to communicate to the community the results of the referendum
funded remodel, as well as the changing culture of the library made possible by the changes
implemented through the new management and facilities. We want people to know what the
library is, what it can offer, and the difference that has been made from the construction. We are
a new library with facilities and services designed to support students academic and social
growth.
Rationale
While reading about the concept of rebranding in general is helpful to understand the
rebranding process, the most helpful sources available were specific libraries which have
undergone the process themselves. According to Potter (2013) the theory of rebranding is more
than a name change. Yet as Opalewski (2014) notes, the name and logo are potentially the most

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highly visible aspect of the library and therefore are significant at communicating to the
community what the library is and is about. This is where visual literacy is significant. The
image of the logo/name can alter perceptions of users right away in both a positive and a
negative way. They can also alter which services users perceive are available at the library. An
old looking image might cause potential users to feel the library is outdated or cannot offer
them the modern services they require. As Mathews (2014) illustrates oftentimes the term library
is removed from the name altogether, mainly because most people associate library with books
and leave it at that. People then fail to see all of the other potential services to which a library can
provide access and simply do not utilize the library to its fullest.
Although a name change is highly visible component of a rebranding initiative, it is not
the only thing that must happen. There must be other changes to accompany the name or the
change can seem artificial. Rebranding is more effective when it is directly linked to a change in
the space and services offered by an institution, as this makes it easier for community members
and users to see the reason for the expense of a remodel/rebrand (Potter, 2013).
Visual literacy techniques will be applied in the rebranding/marketing campaign to reintroduce our community to our updated Information and Learning Commons by capitalizing
on a variety of techniques to create powerful visual tools to reach all community members
without a heavy reliance on words. Many of our students are English Language Learners, so we
want to be sure that we are able to reach as many students, parents, and community members as
possible. Using visuals such as images, graphics, and video will help many of these
demographics to be able to access the Commons via a much more meaningful and stimulating
means than text alone.
Detailed Description

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This project is a rather large undertaking where we as a library will enlist our students to
help create and implement a rebranding/marketing campaign to re-introduce our students, staff,
and community members to the brand new Information and Learning Commons. This will be
accomplished using a multi-pronged campaign focusing on raising awareness of the remodel,
communicating services now available in the Commons, and increasing community awareness
and participation in the Commons as an institution.
The first facet of our campaign is to generate interest for the opening of the commons and
raise awareness of the remodel and its potential benefits to our students and community. One
technique we plan to implement is a MEME campaign. We will hold a contest for students to
generate library related memes, exploring the excitement of the coming Commons, new services
available, etc. These memes will be shared not only in the hallways of the school but via the
Commons social media sites.
Once the Commons open, photographs and short videos of students using the Commons
in a variety of capacities will be shared on the social media pages for community members to see
the difference the new space is making in the lives of our students. These can be done in the form
of a thank you to the community for passing the referendum which made the remodel possible.
We would also like to publish a digital story of the library from its inception in 1939
through the remodel of 2014, detailing the history of the space and its curators and documenting
the changes which it has seen as the result of construction. We would like to capture the positive
outcomes of these changes for community members to see the extent of the need for what was
done and how significant the changes will be to our current and future students.
In addition to the digital story, we would like to leverage animated media and video to
assemble a variety of virtual tour and tutorial pieces to teach both students and community

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members how best to leverage the opportunities available in the Commons. These could range
from tutorials for students on how to print a word documents to tutorials for parents on how to
help their student access research databases, gmail, etc. from home.
We also plan on hosting community event nights where the community is invited beyond
the online visual presence of the Commons to the space itself. Sample events could include
movies nights, book wars, guest authors, book bingo, blind date with a book night, and so forth.
These events will all need to be advertised to potential attendees and this is where visual literacy
will be crucial in getting the information out there. Marketing posters, animations, and video
snippets will be used to relay information to potential events guests. A poorly designed graphic
could be the difference between generating excitement and having a lack luster build up to an
event.
Plan
This project will be completed by creating student teams to assist the librarian with the
various prongs of the campaign. Our district has recently adopted an academy model for our
high schools, meaning we have students in classes for marketing, graphic design, film, etc. that
can be tapped to help create the materials for the Commons while also fulfilling requirement for
their coursework in their academy specific pathways.
A benefit to the campaign being largely student run is that the community will be seeing
genuine commentary and products from our students in the materials. Were not just hyping this
up to make people feel good, its happening because students are taking ownership of their
school and are proud of what is happening.
While we have a small team of students currently, we will need to build these teams in
order to sustain the scope of this project. It is a large undertaking and will not be easy, but if done

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carefully will take our library to the next level of excellence. We want to have a model library for
our students, and this could be one more step in the right direction.
Potential obstacles include not being able to complete the entirety of the campaign in a
relatively short period of time. However, I think there are some components which can be
continuous (tutorials, videos, and the like) while others are more important at the start of the
rebranding journey. Our logo/name was the first step in the process, and we have now begun
generating excitement about our grand re-opening on January 5th. This is where we have begun to
introduce memes from our core student team to the building and social media to build hype
about our open date.
We would like to have all of these initiatives at least started by the end of the 2014-15
school year. While many of them will be ongoing, we will have at least done the initial meme
campaign and an introduction video/tour by March with more tutorials coming through the
month of April and May of 2015. We cannot wait for January.

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Appendix: Artifacts

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Sample Meme:

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Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nHb3cLImvo
http://cjohnsonvisuallit.weebly.com/

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References
Bell, S. (2006, January 26). ACRLog. Retrieved November 29, 2014.
Mathews, S. (2014, February 24). Rebranding Removes the Term Library. Retrieved November
23, 2014.
Opalewski, A. (2014, May 20). - Rebranding. Retrieved December 1, 2014, from
http://troypl.org/library/rebranding-troy-public-library/
Potter, N. (2013, May 13). Rebranding a Libary: How did it all go so right? Retrieved November
23, 2014.
.