Half-assed Public Outreach (HPL @ Anime Matsuri X)

     I really enjoyed this year's Anime Matsuri X (tenth) convention at the end of February 2016 down at the George R. Brown Convention center.  I got to meet voice actor Vic Mignogna and get his autograph on a few of my prized DVD/Blu-Ray combo packs.  It was my friend Sarah's first Anime Matsuri, so I devoted my efforts to ensuring she had an enjoyable convention and thus spent a lot more time with her exploring the dealer's room and a lot less time attending panels than I had originally planned for.  I'm just about out of shelf space for anime figurines, so I didn't make any purchases of that nature this time around.  Probably the first anime convention I've been to where I didn't walk away with at least one purchased figurine.  I did pick up a few rare/out-of-print DVDs for myself but otherwise I was good and restrained myself.

Anyway, while wandering the dealer's room, I noticed that Houston Public Library had purchased and set up a booth at the convention, presumably to do library outreach.  That was definitely a cool idea, I thought.  However, having attended both Friday and Saturday (the busiest days), I kept walking by the HPL table and there was NEVER any person manning the booth, at all, all day.  Just a table laid out with general information about the library and its services and collections, to pick up at your leisure.  But no actual library personnel on site to ask questions, sign up people for library cards, etc.

I thought to myself WOW, this is really half-assed library outreach.  Did they just not want to PAY anyone to be there on library time?  And even if they had been willing to pay at least one library worker or librarian to sit/stand behind the booth's table, their set-up was really really generic and not at all eye-catching.  I was thinking to myself the whole time Guys! You're at an ANIME convention for heaven's sake!  Don't you think you ought to be playing up the parts of your collection that would interest this captive audience??

If I had been in charge, I would have had 1 circulation person on hand ready to sign people up and issue library cards to all Texas residents interested; maybe even with a credit card square on a tablet in case any out-of-state people wanted to pay to get a card for a year (or pay off fines).  More importantly I would've had demonstrations of Hoopla! and all the manga that can be found on ComicsPlus (Library edition) and Hoopla! respectively.  I would've been showing off all the cool old school anime that Hoopla! currently showcases.  THAT would be knowing your audience and catering to their interests.  If they liked what they saw but didn't have a library card, you could sign them up on the spot, show them how to download the Hoopla app, and how to sign in with their new library credentials.  Then they could go on their merry way, watching anime on their phone, showing it to their friends, who might also want to sign up, etc.

I mean, I'm glad HPL was there at all, which was more than we did, but damn did they go about it really half-assed.  They could've gotten so much more out of their library outreach effort if they'd tried just a little bit harder and invested fractionally a bit more $$ beyond what they already sunk getting a dealer's room table in the first place, probably the biggest single ticket expense item in their effort that weekend.