BHL Publicity and Marketing Questions
I recently received this email from Breen Byrnes the Public Information Officer (PIO) for the EOL requesting a similar contact for the BHL. She has raised a good issue that has been on my mind for sometime. I have told her that until the September workshop I will be the contact. I hope we can clarify this issue on the afternoon of the second day.
Each of our libraries is hosted in a larger institution, presumably with an existing PIO or equivalent. Yet, it is not clear that the BHL is or can be very high in that person’s priorities. Individual institutions may legitimately want to highlight their participation and role in the BHL through media communication handled locally. The EOL Steering Committee may request “local” press coverage of some event – what does that mean for us?
There will be a host of routine public information/media communication steps that need to be taken in a timely manner to present ourselves.
Here are some questions:
- Should I be the contact? If so, what should the role be? A conduit to each of your PIOs? Or should the communication with any one or all of your institutional PIOs be through you as the library director? Given our budget, I don’t see how we could hire a person for this role.
- Do we want to develop a pr/marketing plan? Who would be interested in working on it?
I will put this topic on the workshop agenda and post this to the wiki. Any thoughts prior to the workshop would be most welcome.
Yours,
Thomas Garnett
Associate Director, Digital Library and Information Systems
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Rm. 22
MRC 154 PO Box 37012
Washington, D.C. 20013-7012
202-633-2238
202-786-2866 fax
garnettt@si.edu
From: Byrnes, Breen
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 11:03 AM
To: Garnett, Tom;
G.Higley@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: PI Liasions
Dear Tom and Graham:
I spoke with Jesse Ausubel last week and he suggested I contact you regarding a public information liaison for the BHL. I know that you are the project directors for the BHL, but do you have someone that I should add to my list of contacts for PI matters specifically, or do you both handle that aspect of the BHL as well?
Best,
Breen Byrnes
Public Information Specialist
Encyclopedia of Life
National Museum of Natural History
