at Goucher College
Our big idea was to apply for a John Cotton Dana award, the prestigious and very
competitive public relations award given by HW Wilson and now with LAMA, since 1946.
Alberta and
Henry Burke
in 1945
Our campaign was one to celebrate the silver anniversary of the 1975 bequest of alumna Alberta Burke’s splendid Jane Austen
collection. Our staff was small with lots of competing priorities. But you can’t just ignore Jane Austen.
The staff managed to get most of the collection cataloged and one librarian took the initiative to learn the materials
and maintain relations with the Jane Austen Society of North America. The college build a lovely small space to
show it off. So we had space and books – the missing element was people.
One of our early strategies was to seize any opportunity for an event or program, involving
the president (that’s his back in the top middle photo) or the development office whenever possible.
For the anniversary, our communications office produced a beautiful brochure, we held some targeted events, and with an unexpected
estate residual arrived, we inaugurated a biennial scholar-in-residence program. When it came time to prepare the Dana application,
we were fortunate to have an alumna with a brand-new MLS and who was looking for a project.
We were thrilled to receive the award and the
bragging rights it provided. We’ve also seen
some very tangible benefits from this focused
attention on our special collections – Jane
Austen and other materials as well.
We’ve been able to justify a full time special collections librarian, which is letting us do much more course-related work.
We’ve increased the visibility of the library and of the college, as Scott Carlson described in the Chronicle of Higher
Education about a year ago.
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Special Collections is a prominent
feature of our planned Athenaeum.
And we’ve been able to do some interesting work with students. Dominick is one of about a dozen student
assistants this year, each with an individual project – from exploring college history to descriptive bibliography of
17th century books to re-housing parts of the Jane Austen Collection.
So, in a way it started with Jane Austen and extra work for which we couldn’t see an immediate benefit. Today
we’re enjoying some of those benefits – improved staffing and the near prospect of greatly improved space.
Higher visibility for the library and the college, as Scott Carlson pointed out. We gained a heightened sense of the
importance of marketing services and collections, and even got cash money -- $3,000 for that John Cotton Dana
Award.
We couldn’t have done it without help from other college offices and alums, from faculty and from our students,
which is where we started, and who now have a fantastic opportunity for a very special learning experience.