Branding various sections of your website differently (YA vs. adult), even with different URLs
Use your logo as a brand and put it on everything (create an emotional connection)
university had contests to have poster people for READ posters – during NLW, students put their name in to a drawing to be a READ poster! putting pictures on Flickr – athletes, student association presidents, in/famous alumni
Getting ALA involved with all libraries using the same brand in addition to a local one – a recognizable, universal brand
Pepsi can has an ad for fireworks at Navy Pier this summer – wouldn’t it be great to have a similar ad for summer reading for libraries
– Alane mentioned to talking Pat Martin here in Chicago; LitLamp.com

how do you find and get activist users?
Stephen: piss them off
do something controversial
get on their radar
get out in your community and talk about yourself – what you have, what you can do for them, and what they would like to see done
it’s a dialogue
maybe the question is what’s missing from your community, not what do you want from your library; otherwise you find out what you already know
having scheduled and unscheduled events held in the library; collaborating with other organizations
“open space technology;” a self-organizing system for an unconference
go try it out, go where the users are, get your content out there – MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia (two people in the room have Wikipedia entries for their libraries)
could have a blog where you encourage feedback – turn on comments!
what can you learn from what people hate about your system?
can gain trust through competence or through a track record of listening
if you solicit the feedback, you have to be prepared to act on it (or don’t ask for it)
incorporate users into decision-making committees and groups
creating an opportunity for the library to document community activities
don’t dumb down your computers – make them like they are at home; make them look like that, too
have events that aren’t traditionally associated with libraries (like gaming) – UIUC just had their first gaming night! trying to start a gaming archive – students and faculty are willing to contribute!
need to discuss within Illinois how we create a brand that is bigger than one campus (CARLI) – can ALA help with this? present a universal branding piece to CARLI
get out of your four walls and find the people that aren’t coming in to your library; don’t just survey the people that are using your services

if we raise the bar for the haves, does it help or hurt the have-nots?

you get the audience you market to

how would the brand for an offline thing be different from the online version?

can think of the website as a separate branch; users can act differently there and do different things there

Alane: when people are on the web looking, they aren’t looking for you; they’re looking for an answer; don’t focus on the structure – focus on the answer
can bring them back in after you give them the answer
why isn’t the library listed on the local health info site?
Stephen: those libraries that have successful virtual sites have staffed it separately, not as an add-on to existing jobs

Nike on the web is very different from Nike the store; Crate & Barrel is the same, though
Barnes & Noble site came up at the same time as Amazon, but wasn’t successful because just transferred physical to online and didn’t add anything

comment from someone who likes American Libraries online better than the print version

analogy of how newspapers used to look like print counterparts but have since changed – no longer look at all like print

might want to be looking at local and community brands as our models rather than global, commercial presences
do you know what the most popular websites are in your community? why do they work or not work?
create local attachments and presence