Freebies for Your Library

Sarah Sogigian, Shrewsbury Public Library, did an excellent presentation of how to get freebies for your library on Monday May 14, 2007.  Why do libraries want/need freebies?

• No programming budget from the town
• Patrons of all ages love incentives
• A great way to promote your library
• Even saves money (i.e. DVD cases donated from Blockbuster)

Sarah shared some really great tips, such as:

• Ask for what you need and don’t be afraid to throw it out (or give it away)
• Don’t use your work address for freebie hunting – use a commercial web email like gmail or yahoo or hotmail
• Be patient – shipping may take some time
• Keep your patrons in mind as you consider freebies
• Tell places what you’ll be doing with their donations
• Building relationships leads to not just freebies, but networking too – Paul Ryan, for example a local comic book artist met through
• You never know who will respond to your written request for stuff
• Warning: if it’s too good to be true, be wary

Freebies can be used for decorating your space, prizes for programs and to help with programming and collection ideas. Remember that many companies and promotion companies do stuff for educators, and librarians are educators! 

Try searching “Free stuff for educators” or “teacher freebies”

Great places to find freebies include:

• Movie theatres/video stores
• Comic book stores
• Authors
• 
  
• Publishers
  
• Companies
• Foundations
• Industrial Organizations
  
• Celebrities
  

A list of sites Sarah showed can be found at:
http://del.icio.us/metrowestmrls/freebies

Get the full Powerpoint presentation and audio from the session at:
http://www.metrowestce.org/Materials/freebies07.html

 

 

 

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