The University of Tennessee Libraries has won a prestigious public relations award. The UT Libraries is one of only eight libraries in the U.S. and Canada to receive the 2017 John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award. The award, sponsored by the American Library Association, the H.W. Wilson Foundation, and EBSCO Information Services, honors outstanding library public relations.

The UT Libraries was recognized for its “Information Is Our Game” awareness campaign. The campaign used a sports theme to connect students and faculty with the librarian who specializes in their field of study.

The Libraries’ marketing team photographed librarians at campus sports venues and created “trading cards” (like baseball cards) that detailed the librarians’ subject specialties. Whimsical videos that pitted librarians against top-notch athletes carried a simple message about each librarian’s real area of expertise. The videos were aired as advertisements on the campus movie streaming channel and reached tens of thousands of students.

Some of the award-winning creative work of the Libraries’ marketing team can be seen at www.lib.utk.edu/ourgame. The capstone video to the campaign, featuring film clips of some of the Libraries’ more athletically gifted librarians demonstrating their skills, can be viewed at tiny.utk.edu/awesome.

Each winning library will receive a $10,000 award during the American Library Association’s annual conference in June.