Operating in a culture of nearly limitless options for entertainment, Denver Public Library has been seeking ways to stand out from the crowd by marketing our collections and services to potential customers in public spaces around the city. When Comic Book Classroom launched Denver Comic Con as a fundraising event in 2012, DPL staff attended and recognized an opportunity to reach out to the thousands of costumed pop culture fans who flooded the Colorado Convention Center to enjoy the family-friendly event. Although the convention did feature some panels of local genre authors, we felt the library’s presence could add value to the programming lineup while showing off all the great materials and services we provide.

In 2013, DPL made a splash at the second annual Denver Comic Con. By hosting six well-attended readers’ advisory programs on such topics as steampunk culture and apocalyptic fiction, we highlighted our collections of comics, genre fiction, movies, television and music, while demonstrating our ability and willingness to talk about pop culture with our customers. We also offered our services to the event’s programmers, stepping in to fill moderator roles for other panel presentations. Near the entrance to the exhibit hall, we reached out to participants with a “Weird West Photo Booth,” which tied in with one of our programs and offered participants in superhero costumes an Old West backdrop for some truly surreal photos. While assisting with photos, we made sure to let people know about all the great things they can find at DPL. We also advertised an upcoming steampunk film series in an effort to entice participants to check out the library in person. Back at the library, the event stirred up a lot of excitement among staff who were eager to help with our preparation and marketing efforts. Our customers benefited from this new energy as staff created DPL blog posts tying in to our panel topics. In preparing for the programs, we generated a number of booklists, which were later used to create bookmarks to be distributed at Denver Comic Con and in the library. These lists were also made available as online booklists for our customers. A "DPL @ Denver Comic Con" webpage linked to all our related content and was used for social media marketing on DPL and Denver Comic Con social media platforms, further broadening our exposure.

DPL’s programs proved to be popular with participants, drawing standing-room-only crowds. Library staff were delighted to have the opportunity to share their expertise with audiences of enthusiastic listeners, and the response they received was overwhelmingly positive. Convention organizers let us know that DPL’s programs were some of the highest rated in their post-event survey. Staff working our outreach table spoke with hundreds of participants, many of whom expressed surprise and excitement about the library’s presence at such an event. After our success in 2013, DPL staff resolved to create an even bigger presence in 2014. While we were the only library with an official presence last year, we have been approached by several other Colorado libraries and are taking advantage of this opportunity to collaborate with others. With this additional help and even more staff members eager to be involved, we are doubling the number of programs we will be presenting. We will reach out to kids and their parents by hosting a craft table in the kids’ area and performing “pop-up storytimes” in unexpected places around the convention center. In the teen area, we will set up a mobile version of our ideaLab tech makerspace. We will also bring our mobile-library-on-a-bike, which will give us a display space for circulating materials and the ability to issue new library cards. With attendance expected to hit 75,000, we have high hopes that we will reach even more people and open their minds about what DPL can do for them.