#colorourcollection

Garner, A., Goldberg, J., & Pou, R. (2016). Collaborative Social Media Campaigns and Special Collections: A Case Study on #ColorOurCollections. RBM: A Journal Of Rare Books, Manuscripts, & Cultural Heritage, 17(2), 100-117.

This article is about using social media to promote a library or institution. The New York Academy of Medicine Library started a social media campaign in which they would create coloring pages based on objects in their collection: plants, herbs, anatomy, and unicorns. Users and participating libraries can download the images and share them across social media using #colorourcollection. This campaign got buzz through many libraries, publications, and websites. It became an education tool for school libraries or schools in general. This became quite successful. This was a fun and cool idea to get people engaged in one's collection. The library was able to get on that trend of the adult coloring books and social media in order to have it work for their own library. This article could help library staff think creatively about engagement with the community. They should focus on trends and what people are doing. It is also important to establish relationships ad get people on board for a program to flourish. I liked this article because it is just an interesting idea for a library to tackle. It may not work for every library but if you have an interesting collection that could lend itself to a coloring book, then go for it. It is fun to see outside of the box and that hard work can be a good pay off.