Before the first Connection: A marketing Campaign for a Law Librarys Mobile Application Terry...

• Before the first Connection: A marketing Campaign for a

Law Library’s Mobile Application Terry Ballard, Systems Librarian

Mendik LibraryNew York Law School

When you come to a fork in the road, take it

Who we are

• New York Law School has been in existence for more than 120 years in Lower Manhattan.

• Past professors have included Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes.

• Our most famous graduate – Judge Judy

Mendik Library opened its new facility in 2009

• “A really good hockey player plays where the puck is. A really great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

• Wayne Gretzke

Before the before• Deciding to go ahead with asking a vendor.

• A look at existing libraries in the Android and iTunes store showed us that the most-often cited vendor was Boopsie.

• We negotiated through the Spring and Summer of 2011.

Finding how other law libraries did it

• Unfortunately, there were no other law school libraries listed in the iPhone and Android marketplaces.

• We would have to be the pioneers in this one.

Two new features• We wanted the program to include course

reserves – getting that was the result of considerable brainstorming because they hadn’t done reserves before.

• We also wanted our popular DRAGNET Google Custom Search site included. Getting a good display on that turned out to be our responsibility, but we did get it done.

Ready to get the Word Out

A graphic look was created for the project

A link was added to the main screen of our web page

A bookmark was designed to highlight features of the app

QR codes were used on the other side of the bookmark

QR codes also posted in the elevator

• Since our library is under ground, the elevator is the only place where cell phones could be used.

The October 18th launch was announced on the library blog

The Big Day!

The Aftermath

First full month

Nov. 2011 Users By Device

device users

browser 133 61.86%

iPhone 45 20.93%

Android 17 7.91%

iPad 10 4.65%

BlackBerry 5 2.33%

iPod 5 2.33%

total users 215 100.00%

Total searches – note that the average user made 16 searches per

sessionbrowser 1,272 37.40%

iPhone 1,218 35.81%

Android 480 14.11%

iPod 210 6.17%

iPad 193 5.67%

BlackBerry 28 0.82%

total queries 3,401 100.00%

December

• The total number of users dropped, but they still made 19 queries per session. Also, we noted that school was out of session that entire month.

Feedback• In 2012, the Mendik Library was awarded the

annual Excellence in Marketing Award:Use of Technology by the American Association of Law Libraries. This was the second year in a row that the library has won an AALL award.

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“Keep an eye to the future, an ear to the past, but after thinking it over notice nothing much

lasts.”Robert Hunter