Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away!
We had an exciting day in our library yesterday: we held a party to celebrate the launch of our firm’s photo archive, which our department developed and will maintain. The archive consists of photos from various events over the past 30 years and has some pretty priceless shots, many of which celebrate the excess of the 80s. I am so glad I was still in elementary school during that decade, and at least had a good excuse for wearing Spandex (I didn’t know any better!).
To help promote the event, we got the firm’s resident band, which includes one member of the Research & Reference department, to play a couple of songs: “Kodachrome” in honour of the photo archive, and “Werewolves of London” for Halloween (I veto’ed “Monster Mash”. If I hear that song one more time, I’m going to go insane.).
This was the second time we’ve worked a band gig into a library event, and it is PR gold - people had been asking when the next one would be since about two minutes after the first one ended. We made a really cool poster to advertise the party, using the movie poster generator at FD’s Flickr Toys, and of course, we followed the golden rule of library parties and baked six or seven dozen Halloween cookies and cupcakes to lure people in.
Most importantly, we are receiving excellent feedback about the archive, and it got people in the door. The archive, which we built with CS/Textworks and access via WebPublisherPro, is very easy to use, and while the interface is nothing fancy, I’m looking forward to adding a few bells and whistles when I get the chance.