A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. While institutional repositories make the scholarly work of your institution’s students and faculty available half a world away, reliance on this global potential may be too narrow a publicizing strategy for both your repository and the content it manages. Instead, focus your active outreach to a hundred mile radius or so. By delivering your world-class product to the students and teachers in the high school just down the road, you can achieve tangible results from which your library, your university, and your community may directly benefit.

Scholarly Communication Librarian A.J. Boston discusses the benefits experienced from publicizing the Murray State University IR to a local audience. Session members will discuss collections housed by their own libraries and how they are (or could be) used by local high schools or other non-academic local communities. Methods and strategies for these types of outreach efforts will also be think-tanked. Participants should leave this session with the kernel of a plan to spread world-class scholarship to their local high school classroom.