Rachel Laban

Rachel's work on the Creating powerful promotions course was exceptionally high quality throughout. She used the course - and the time away from day-to-day running of the library during lockdown - to grow her creative ideas and plan for the time her library would reopen. The work was well-researched, thorough, thoughtful and creative.

Rachel's love of reading, her warmth and intelligence, and her strong empathy for readers are integral to how she works. Her plans are meticulous, and she can turn good ideas into practical, realistic projects - which is what made her course outputs so usable rather than just well-intentioned.

01 Readers finding reading in lockdown

Rachel really understands how to appeal to a wide variety of readers and persuade them to discover a great new read. During lockdown she also developed an acute insight into how particular groups of readers must be feeling - having found reading as a new means of escaping restrictions they had never before experienced in their lives. That empathy shaped how she thought about who she was promoting to, and why it mattered.

02 Growing the online library

Having worked entirely online on this course, Rachel was determined to grow the popularity of the online library that itself grew so much during lockdown. The format of the course matched the format of the audience she was developing - and she planned to carry that momentum forward rather than treat it as a temporary lockdown phenomenon.

03 Breaking out of promotional ruts

Rachel's own reflection on the course points to something useful for any team: after time spent promoting to readers, it's easy to get stuck in a rut. Promotions need to be a deliberate part of the process if a library wants to increase footfall and encourage customers to try a different book - and quiet time is exactly when the creative thinking about promotions can happen.