The Arapahoe Library District in Colorado serves 250,000 people across eight branch locations. With more than 800 events per month and a bevy of community resources, communications with patrons is an ongoing challenge. Today, their team uses 40 displays powered by Enplug digital signage to market upcoming events, share announcements, and promote community resources across their branches.
Over its fifty years in existence, the Arapahoe Library District has built a reputation as being innovative and forward-thinking, embracing new technologies and digital library services that further their vision of creating a “literate, informed and fulfilled community.” In the district’s branches today you’ll find much more than books – with 3D printers, maker spaces, and recording studios among the offerings.
Sharing these resources and promoting the 800+ events that take place each month is a huge task for the marketing team at Arapahoe Libraries. Printing hundreds of posters, delivering them to the branches, and installing them is time-intensive and expensive.
In 2017 the Arapahoe marketing team asked Anthony White, the Manager of Web Systems, to find a more effective and affordable digital alternative to printing collateral. He created a priority list that emphasized the following:
- The interface should be simple enough that the marketing team can manage content themselves.
- His team should have control over which screens they chose and be able to install the system.
- The system should support content management across many locations and be flexible enough to do more than just static images.
After researching options — from building a system in-house using Raspberry Pi devices to using a digital signage platform — Anthony chose to use Enplug’s platform for content management.
According to Anthony,
When I first saw Enplug’s content management dashboard, I was immediately struck by how intuitive and ‘Apple-esque’ it is. The platform met all of our needs and I knew that my team would be able to master the interface quickly.
For the Arapahoe Libraries team, setting up Enplug has been a smooth process. They installed Planar 55” displays where posters were previously mounted – up to 15 per branch. Anthony connected Enplug Devices to each screen and linked them to their web dashboard, which took around five minutes per screen. The marketing team then used the Enplug Dashboard to deploy content to the newly-installed screens. Three branches are fully deployed with three more branches on the way this year.
Currently, the screens are used mainly as replacements for printed posters. They display graphics with upcoming events, community resources, and announcements. Some screens are also used to display menu content for the cafes in each branch.
The Arapahoe Libraries team appreciates that Enplug is future-proof, always adding new content and updates that they can use. In the future, the team plans on adding social media walls, streaming video, and HTML5 web content to displays.
Anthony says the project has already made a big impact:
Our new displays brighten up our libraries and create an engaging communications hub for our patrons. Enplug is helping us to bring content sharing to the next level and fulfill our mission as a library district.
For more information and to get a free demo of Enplug’s software, visit enplug.com.