The Texas Library Association is the largest state library association in the country representing over 5,000 librarians with a mission to unite and amplify the voices of the library community through advocacy, education and intentional equity, diversity and inclusion.
The Problem:
When some politicians across Texas began calling for “investigations into books,” which appeared to be more about getting votes for the upcoming election, TLA knew it had to act fast.
How We Helped:
TLA hired ECPR Texas in January 2022 and our solution was to form a grassroots coalition called Texans for the Right to Read and execute a public information campaign in opposition to the current push by Texas’ elected officials to ban books from Texas libraries. The goal of this coalition was to bring enough awareness to the issue that should it end up in the 88th Texas legislative session, there would be organized opposition ready to act.
Even with dozens of proposed bills that aimed to negatively impact librarians, libraries and literature, the coalition was successful in assisting with efforts to keep the most damaging proposals from becoming law. Furthermore, they were also able to apply pressure regionally and prevent or significantly delay a number of school board policies from going into effect as well.
Results:
By the end of the contract, ECPR Texas was able to secure 553 media mentions that generated $8,897,686 in earned media revenue, and reached an estimated 363,794,546 individuals. TLA was featured in local, statewide and national outlets that include but are not limited to Austin American-Statesman, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, PBS NewsHour, CNN and MSNBC.
In November prior to the 88th Texas legislative session kicking off, TLA utilized ECPR’s digital strategy service to build an active and engaging grassroots community online via a custom Texan for the Right to Read website, a monthly newsletter that garnered over 3,300 coalition members and a social footprint across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that reached over 1,199,000 people. We ran single-image and video-targeted campaigns that focused regionally on areas with a rising number of library-related issues to statewide audiences, generating over 2,600,000 impressions.
