Promotions with Placards

by Addie Van Salisbury on Dec 24, 2020

Promotions with Placards

Placards are one of the many features Aspen Discovery utilizes to ensure patrons have access to and are aware of all the resources your library offers. Unfortunately, we all know there are often events, online resources, social resources, and countless other opportunities the library provides that patrons are not aware of! If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that libraries are and will continue to be a resource for more than just books and entertainment. Placards give us the ability to spotlight any of those things your library wants to offer to patrons.

What is a placard and how do I create one?

Placards are a small box that appear above catalog search results. They are similar to an advertisement. The placard itself is entirely customizable within your administration. Placards are triggered by keywords. The idea is that if a patron is placing a related search, the appropriate placard will appear. For example, if I am searching for traveling a placard may appear in my catalog search for passport services.

More information on setting up placards.

Spotlighting Resources

Placards are a great way to allow access to any type of resource or service based off of a pertinent search. For example, in Uintah County Library if you search for 'languages' a placard for Mango Languages appear. You could also do a similar placard for databases or other vendors your patrons have access to.

Spotlighting Events

If you are planning an event you can share information on that event through a placard! For example, if you have chess club you can have a placard show with your event information when a patron places a search for 'chess' or 'board games'. You could also share book club information if a patron is searching for any of the titles your book club is reading!

Spotlighting Pandemic Information

Our partner Salina Public Library used placards to share information on curbside pickup and pandemic measures in place in the library. If you did any search in their catalog, this placard would appear. They did this by putting % in the search term for the placard. This means any search would produce the placard.

Spotlighting Special Items & Collections

Our partners at CLiC have a placard for their hotspots. This appears to patrons if they search things like 'wifi'. This is a great way to share information on items or collections your patrons may not even know they have access to!

Sharing Placard Ideas

At our Aspen Gathering on December 10th we had a show and tell of placards. Several members of the community shared some amazing placard ideas and how they created those!

Arlington Public Library has some beautiful placards that are generated by searches for popular titles with a lot of holds. For example, if you search 'Anxious People' you will see a placard that links to a list of titles they own that are similar.

Our partner Central Kansas Library System has a placard for the suicide hotline when you do a search of 'help'. There are countless ways to use placards and we love hearing from our partners to see how they end up using this feature.

Shortly after the December Aspen Gathering, Sam Passey of the Uintah County Library System created a #placards channel in the Aspen-Discovery Slack workspace.

Come join the conversation and share ideas on how your library is using placards to connect events, resources, and collections to patrons searching your catalog.