When Renee Naylor was a child, the library seemed like the most wondrous place on the planet.
“I couldn’t understand how it was legal to be allowed to borrow as many books as I wanted!” remembered Renee.
Now Renee gets to spend every day surrounded by books (and other great services, of course) in her role as Library Education and Communications Coordinator for the Law Library Victoria.
Law Library Victoria is based in Melbourne, Australia, and is the umbrella organization that manages the collections of the Victorian law jurisdictions: the Supreme Court, County Court, Magistrates’ Court, Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, and Victorian Bar libraries. Their physical and digital collections are made up of legal databases, textbooks, legislation, journals, law reports, and research tools.
“Our aim is to help support the administration of justice by providing access to authoritative legal information to judicial staff and lawyers,” explained Renee. “We provide research support and training and assist users to find the information they need.”
Renee has been in her current role for 8 years. It’s a position that seems tailor-made for her!
“I applied for my first role as Reference Librarian with no experience in law, but the library director liked my personality so much she hired me,” remembered Renee. “She later told me ‘I can teach legal research, but I can’t teach enthusiasm.’”
I can’t claim credit for discovering Renee’s library marketing work. One of you did that!
In the last Super Library Marketing survey, a reader recognized the Law Library Victoria for doing great work in promotions and marketing. Specifically, they said, “They are a hybrid of government and public library, similar to the service we offer, and it’s great how they manage to have everything in a website with an amazing crisp design.”
“We are actually in the process of a complete rebuild,” exclaimed Renee. “The functionality and design will be improved, with a better user experience. The menus, content, and access to resources will be easier to navigate, with new features coming such as ‘My List’, where users can save a custom list of shortcuts. This will be launched in late 2023.”
The Law Library Victoria has an outstanding social media presence. As a special library, Renee takes a nuanced and targeted approach to how she decides what to post.
“For special libraries on social media I would say look at related organizations in your field, see what they are doing and what their audiences respond well to,” advised Renee. “Build relationships with them so they start sharing your content. This will increase awareness and give your library a sense of authority in the eyes of its audience.
“We have Twitter for timely information such as judgment alerts and announcements,” explained Renee. “I try to schedule at least 3 posts per week, always with an image or video, but we often end up posting every day.”
“LinkedIn is still fairly new for us, and its focus is education and research skills. We post exclusive content there, such as videos and research articles. We post less often as the audience is still small, once every week or two.”
“And we have Instagram. It’s very popular, and the focus is more on general engagement. We post pictures of the heritage Supreme Court Library, and of our collections, and will include some facts or interesting information.”
There are challenges to promoting and marketing the Law Library Victoria. Like many of you, Renee battles for attention amidst the constant barrage of content coming at her target audience.
“There is so much information coming at lawyers every day, via email, social media, and websites,” explained Renee. “It’s hard to penetrate and reinforce your brand identity.”
“We get confused with other organizations, or people aren’t aware of how modern we are and the digital focus.”
“Getting people to read your content and act on it is a challenge we are still grappling with. Stakeholder relationships are key, and leveraging our relationships with well-known legal organizations has really helped.”
Renee Naylor
When she’s looking for inspiration, Renee says you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
“I look at what related organizations are doing on social media, and complete regular professional development, such as social media conferences, communications courses, and webinars,” she said. “They allow me ‘creative thinking time’ for new ideas. I really like what the Victorian State Library does on their social media, it’s very engaging across all channels.”
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Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion 
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