Case Study: Hauppauge Public Library

Making the Catalog Visible in Google Drives Hauppauge Residents to OPAC

Location: Hauppauge, NY

System Info: One location

Service Area: Hauppauge Public Library serves 10,900 people. It's a suburban area with a population that's mostly older and wealthy.

Library URL: www.hauppaugelibrary.org

Library Situation

I met Peter Velikonja [Head of Research at Koios] at the American Library Association 2018 Annual Conference on the exhibit floor. After discussing the Koios Ads service, I left feeling that I could not start soon enough. Our community was not finding all the good things we offer via our traditional channels, so having a chance to appear in search results seemed like a natural solution.

What type of product / service have you promoted with your Google Ad Grant?

Hauppauge Public Library has promoted a wide range of resources: ebooks and e-audiobooks (Libby, OverDrive, cloudLibrary, hoopla, TumbleBooks); homework help (Brainfuse); language learning (Pronunciator, Muzzy); music (Freegal and hoopla); learning (Lynda.com, hoopla, Kanopy); Consumer Reports. In July 2019 we added our catalog of holdings to our advertising mix.

What challenges was your library addressing? What goals was it trying to meet?

My meeting with Koios was random, and their solution was something I did not know I was looking for. The library is always trying to cut through a busy advertising space and often fails, so showing up in search results made the most sense.

Our hope was that our community would become more aware of the breadth of offerings we have, and ultimately, that members of our community would use them more.

Prior to all this, our team was finding that the products we subscribed to were getting moderate attention via our normal promotional channels. Being able to structure ads using more terms that showcase the complexity of some of the databases and resources has helped increase usage. For instance, Brainfuse is great for homework help, but it also has resume assistance, along with term-paper-writing and standardized-test support. Being seen in Google Ads through the Koios Ads service allows there to be more terms associated with that one product.

Why did you decide to try Google Ads?

Getting free ads was a driving force. We do not have a budget for paid advertising, so this was an excellent way to get in front of someone at the moment of their need. Plus the Koios fee is reasonable to help us make the most of the ads we receive via the Ad Grant.

What did the start-up process look like at your library?

Hauppauge was up and running within a month of signing up. We made some more specific landing pages, which took another month, but it was not too labor intensive, and Koios helped us with the elements that are required for a good landing page. Koios also helped with straightening out some Google tracking issues, Tag Manager, and more.

What sorts of results have you seen from using Google Ads? Have you resolved the challenges and / or met the goals that you started with?

Overall, the awareness of our offerings is increasing and our Board of Trustees is satisfied with the service. We are continuing to build more landing pages to attract more and varied searchers. It is great to be in the search space in this way. I cannot imagine not being there in our day and age.

Our community is finding our materials more than they did before, especially since we started what Koios calls a "catalog campaign." We gave Koios access to our MARC records and their staff was able to use that data to make Google Ads appear whenever nearby searchers key in book titles, authors, or subjects. Our ad volume [the number of ads that are triggered by people's search terms] has risen sharply since this series of ads began. (The MARC records were shared via an export, not API, so I could control what gets shared on the search. I do not want something out there if anyone could not borrow it.)

Any words of wisdom you want to share with your peers?

Sign up today.