The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Member Engagement and Outreach Committee hosted the fifth annual ARL Film Festival—the ARLIES—in May 2020 during the virtual Spring Association Meeting. The ARLIES film festival highlights and shares videos developed by member institutions to increase knowledge and use of libraries, their spaces, services, collections, and expertise.
ARL members were invited to submit films of less than three minutes in the following categories: How-To/Instruction, Development/Fundraising, Collections-Focused, Publicity/Marketing, and Free-Form. There were 15 submissions, which member representatives were invited to view and vote on between Wednesday, May 6, and Sunday, May 17. The 10 award winners (see below) were announced in the ARL email newsletter on Friday, May 22.
View all the 2020 ARLIES submissions and descriptions of the 15 featured films.
2020 ARLIES Winners
Best of How-To/Instruction Films: Southern Illinois University Carbondale
This video directs students in two first-year partner programs (English 101 and Communication Studies 101) to useful resources for keeping up to date with Morris Library’s Covid-19 response, highlights our Ask-A-Librarian chat service, and provides basic step-by-step instructions for using our discovery service to locate and retrieve scholarly articles and ebooks.
Although I try to avoid making videos that feature database interfaces (they change so often and sometimes without much notice), the pandemic and resulting library closures made it necessary. The video also had to be created very quickly in order to reach our students before their points of need windows passed.
A teacher in one of our partner programs responded to the video, saying “Thank you for generating such a helpful and humane video for the students … this is such a meaningful contribution.” The video link has been shared among our partner programs as well as more broadly in the university community.
Best of Development/Fundraising Films: University of Maryland
The purpose of this video was to spark interest and raise funds among fans of Maryland men’s basketball to support a major digitization effort to preserve men’s basketball heritage. The University Archives has more than 1,200 film reels and 2,800 videotapes of men’s basketball footage spanning from 1953 to 2014. Many of these materials are fragile and in danger of being lost forever. The goal of the fundraising effort is to raise $500,000 in order to digitize all 4,000 pieces of film and video. Once digitized and preserved, every game, highlight reel, and interview will be available online, 24/7, through the University Archives digital collections.
The video, narrated by Johnny Holliday, the “voice” of the Maryland Terrapin football and basketball games since 1979, has helped raise just over $100,000 in gifts and pledges to the basketball preservation project to date. Approximately 40% of those funds were raised directly through a crowd-sourced fundraising project, where the video was first showcased. This project served as a lead generator for additional pledges after the campaign ended. Funds have since been raised through annual giving, peer-to-peer solicitation, and major gift requests. Legendary former coach Lefty Driessell also personally donated film and videotape to the collection, helping to build momentum behind the project. (https://today.umd.edu/articles/driesell-digitized-435a566f-efde-41ed-ac1c-d3d348e28ba1)
This fundraising project will take several years and the video was created in a way that allows it to continue to be leveraged in a variety of ways—including being shown on the jumbotron at basketball games.
Best of Collections-Focused Films: The University of British Columbia
In Spring 2019, Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) at UBC Library acquired the personal archive of Hanne Wassermann Walker, a significant figure of pre-WWII Viennese cultural and social life who went on to emigrate to Canada, taking up residence in Vancouver where she lived until her death in 1985. This acquisition aligned with RBSC’s mandate to focus on materials from BC and also highlighted RBSC’s concerted efforts to increase documentation of the role of women in history. UBC Library Communications developed written and video content to tell this story and to promote this significant new acquisition on and off campus. Telling the story of the archive as well as how it came to UBC Library provided a unique opportunity to highlight the value RBSC and UBC Library offers not only to scholars on campus, but to members of the local Vancouver community.
The video content created for this project (a 3-minute, 48-second-long video and a shorter 30-second video used for social media sharing) was the best-performing piece of video content created by UBC Library in 2019, seeing more than 4,000 views across social media channels (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) and impressive engagement rates of 2.8% on Facebook and 1% on Twitter. This number does not include the hundreds of times the video was played on eight screens across Library locations on the UBC Vancouver campus between March 9 and 16, 2019.
The video was also used as a tool to pitch the story of the acquisition to key media, strategically timed with International Women’s Day, and saw coverage from local and national media outlets such as The Vancouver Sun, The Vancouver Courier, North Shore News, Canadian Art Magazine, Galleries West Magazine, and BC History Magazine, with some outlets even embedding the video into their online stories. Together, these publications reach an audience of approximately 2 million.
Link to the 30-second abbreviated social media asset: https://twitter.com/ubclibrary/status/1104066855692587008.
Best of Publicity/Marketing Films: The Ohio State University
The purpose of this video is to showcase The Ohio State University Libraries and to demonstrate the expanded role an academic research library fulfills, not just within the confines of campus, but within the larger community. We promote innovative research and creative expression; advance effective teaching; curate and preserve information essential for scholarship and learning; and share knowledge and culture with our local, state, national and global communities. We are a vibrant, dynamic community of dedicated faculty and staff redefining what a university library can and should be.
The audience includes current students, faculty, university administration and staff, donors, supporters, peers and experts and, based on the response we have received, our message has resonated with them.
The video has been shared on University Libraries’ website, in email communications to supporters and via social media. In just four short months, it has garnered nearly 18,000 impressions and 570 engagements on Facebook as well as more than 750 views on the website and on YouTube.
The video has been used by our development officer as an introduction to potential donors. Since incorporating it in her “cold call” messages, she has seen an increase in meeting confirmations. One prospective donor, a lecturer with California State Long Beach, wrote, “Before I forget: that video was marvelous. I want to share it with everyone concerned here as an aspirational message and vision for collaboration.”
The video was initially shared with University Libraries’ faculty and staff during a general meeting. Several people commented afterward with one in particular stating, “It makes me proud to work here!”
After seeing the video, Skip Prichard, President and Chief Executive Officer of OCLC, wrote, “What a terrific video showcasing the OSU libraries. The repositioning and future orientation should be a case study.”
Liv Gjestvang, Associate Vice President for Learning Technology, The Ohio State University, wrote, “I loved this video. What an amazing story about OSU libraries and your vision for your work. So awesome. I’m sharing this in my team newsletter.”
Best of Free-Form Films: University of California, Berkeley
Librarians are at the heart of everything we do—from helping build and preserve our world-class collections, to answering a dizzying assortment of research questions, to helping faculty and students as they work on a variety of projects, from class papers to dissertations and books. We wanted to show our social media audience how vital librarians are to the whole university community, but in a fun, unusual way. So we put our librarians to the test. Google autocompletes questions in the search bar as you type, hinting at what other people have searched for online. So we presented some of those most-searched (and sometimes strange) questions about librarians and their work to our staff. The result is a lighthearted look at the very substantial contributions of the library to our world. The video was one of our most viewed of 2019. It was posted on the Library’s main website, shared on social media, and UC Berkeley campus PR also shared it on their social media accounts. It had more than 5,000 views on Facebook and nearly 4,000 views on Twitter.
Best Production: The Ohio State University
The purpose of this video is to showcase The Ohio State University Libraries and to demonstrate the expanded role an academic research library fulfills, not just within the confines of campus, but within the larger community. We promote innovative research and creative expression; advance effective teaching; curate and preserve information essential for scholarship and learning; and share knowledge and culture with our local, state, national and global communities. We are a vibrant, dynamic community of dedicated faculty and staff redefining what a university library can and should be.
The audience includes current students, faculty, university administration and staff, donors, supporters, peers and experts and, based on the response we have received, our message has resonated with them.
The video has been shared on University Libraries’ website, in email communications to supporters and via social media. In just four short months, it has garnered nearly 18,000 impressions and 570 engagements on Facebook as well as more than 750 views on the website and on YouTube.
The video has been used by our development officer as an introduction to potential donors. Since incorporating it in her “cold call” messages, she has seen an increase in meeting confirmations. One prospective donor, a lecturer with California State Long Beach, wrote, “Before I forget: that video was marvelous. I want to share it with everyone concerned here as an aspirational message and vision for collaboration.”
The video was initially shared with University Libraries’ faculty and staff during a general meeting. Several people commented afterward with one in particular stating, “It makes me proud to work here!”
After seeing the video, Skip Prichard, President and Chief Executive Officer of OCLC, wrote, “What a terrific video showcasing the OSU libraries. The repositioning and future orientation should be a case study.”
Liv Gjestvang, Associate Vice President for Learning Technology, The Ohio State University, wrote, “I loved this video. What an amazing story about OSU libraries and your vision for your work. So awesome. I’m sharing this in my team newsletter.”
Best Humor: University of California, Berkeley
Librarians are at the heart of everything we do—from helping build and preserve our world-class collections, to answering a dizzying assortment of research questions, to helping faculty and students as they work on a variety of projects, from class papers to dissertations and books. We wanted to show our social media audience how vital librarians are to the whole university community, but in a fun, unusual way. So we put our librarians to the test. Google autocompletes questions in the search bar as you type, hinting at what other people have searched for online. So we presented some of those most-searched (and sometimes strange) questions about librarians and their work to our staff. The result is a lighthearted look at the very substantial contributions of the library to our world. The video was one of our most viewed of 2019. It was posted on the Library’s main website, shared on social media, and UC Berkeley campus PR also shared it on their social media accounts. It had more than 5,000 views on Facebook and nearly 4,000 views on Twitter.
Best Performance: University of California, Berkeley
Librarians are at the heart of everything we do—from helping build and preserve our world-class collections, to answering a dizzying assortment of research questions, to helping faculty and students as they work on a variety of projects, from class papers to dissertations and books. We wanted to show our social media audience how vital librarians are to the whole university community, but in a fun, unusual way. So we put our librarians to the test. Google autocompletes questions in the search bar as you type, hinting at what other people have searched for online. So we presented some of those most-searched (and sometimes strange) questions about librarians and their work to our staff. The result is a lighthearted look at the very substantial contributions of the library to our world. The video was one of our most viewed of 2019. It was posted on the Library’s main website, shared on social media, and UC Berkeley campus PR also shared it on their social media accounts. It had more than 5,000 views on Facebook and nearly 4,000 views on Twitter.
Best Reflection of Diversity: University of California, Berkeley
Librarians are at the heart of everything we do—from helping build and preserve our world-class collections, to answering a dizzying assortment of research questions, to helping faculty and students as they work on a variety of projects, from class papers to dissertations and books. We wanted to show our social media audience how vital librarians are to the whole university community, but in a fun, unusual way. So we put our librarians to the test. Google autocompletes questions in the search bar as you type, hinting at what other people have searched for online. So we presented some of those most-searched (and sometimes strange) questions about librarians and their work to our staff. The result is a lighthearted look at the very substantial contributions of the library to our world. The video was one of our most viewed of 2019. It was posted on the Library’s main website, shared on social media, and UC Berkeley campus PR also shared it on their social media accounts. It had more than 5,000 views on Facebook and nearly 4,000 views on Twitter.
Best of Show: The Ohio State University
The purpose of this video is to showcase The Ohio State University Libraries and to demonstrate the expanded role an academic research library fulfills, not just within the confines of campus, but within the larger community. We promote innovative research and creative expression; advance effective teaching; curate and preserve information essential for scholarship and learning; and share knowledge and culture with our local, state, national and global communities. We are a vibrant, dynamic community of dedicated faculty and staff redefining what a university library can and should be.
The audience includes current students, faculty, university administration and staff, donors, supporters, peers and experts and, based on the response we have received, our message has resonated with them.
The video has been shared on University Libraries’ website, in email communications to supporters and via social media. In just four short months, it has garnered nearly 18,000 impressions and 570 engagements on Facebook as well as more than 750 views on the website and on YouTube.
The video has been used by our development officer as an introduction to potential donors. Since incorporating it in her “cold call” messages, she has seen an increase in meeting confirmations. One prospective donor, a lecturer with California State Long Beach, wrote, “Before I forget: that video was marvelous. I want to share it with everyone concerned here as an aspirational message and vision for collaboration.”
The video was initially shared with University Libraries’ faculty and staff during a general meeting. Several people commented afterward with one in particular stating, “It makes me proud to work here!”
After seeing the video, Skip Prichard, President and Chief Executive Officer of OCLC, wrote, “What a terrific video showcasing the OSU libraries. The repositioning and future orientation should be a case study.”
Liv Gjestvang, Associate Vice President for Learning Technology, The Ohio State University, wrote, “I loved this video. What an amazing story about OSU libraries and your vision for your work. So awesome. I’m sharing this in my team newsletter.”
