The public awareness community outreach campaign begins with the advertising project and then will expand to include multilingual brochures on how to use the library, new library cards, and a redesign of the library's website. Under Mayor Menino's leadership, the library has made tremendous strides recently. It was our job to dust off its musty image and tell people what's really going on at the Boston Public Library. As you can see from the ads, we had some fun with it in the process. I think the library is an amazing resource that people take for granted rather than explore and use to their advantage.
Books are just the beginning is the tag line used on all of the material.
Local media outlets are generously running the ads as a free public service. We are expanding library hours on the weekends and keeping at least one branch in every district open at night to make using the library more convenient. Today, we begin telling our customers about the progress we are making. The Boston Public Library, established in 1848, was the first public library in America, and the first library to let people borrow books, a truly revolutionary concept at the time. In 1870, the BPL was the first library to institute a system of branch libraries linked to a central library with the opening of the East Boston branch, and the first library to establish a space specifically for children with the opening of the children's room in Copley Square in 1895.