On Monday, December 1, 2008, Ask Here PA had a press event in Pittsburgh.  Speakers included PA Dept. of Education Secretary Ed Zahorchak, Commissioner for Libraries in PA, Clare Zales, and the Director of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.  The event included a demonstration of the service. 

Some excellent articles resulted from the event.  Here are links to several:

http://www.kqv.com/viewwirereadynews.asp?feed=http://kqv.com/wire/news/5279988_Ask_Here_Pa_134953.xml (radio clip)

http://www.pittnews.com/news/reference_arsenal_adds_new_weapon

http://www.dailyamerican.com/articles/2008/12/01/news/news/news524.txt

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08337/932059-96.stm

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_601012.html

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08336/931984-100.stm

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleyindependent/teenscene/s_600931.html

One story from the event is that Representative Costa spoke.  Actually, his brother Senator Costa spoke as well, but Rep Costa started off by telling the story that begins this article - http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08337/932059-96.stm - and as he began this story, which was the fact that he used the service the night before, he proceeded to pull a transcript out of his jacket and tell everyone about the software and his session.  It turns out that he was served by “Librarian 'Jen (24/7 Librarian)” and she did a super job and really sold him on how great the service is.

California's AskNow

This site offers press releases, AskQNow logos, color palettes, and more to assist California participants in promoting their service. Look at it for some great ideas! Here is a direct link to the Press Kit file.

AskNow_PublicityKit_rev_Nov07.doc

 The Wisconsin service,

has two sample press releases that might interest you: http://askaway.pbwiki.com/f/Fall+Press+Release+1.doc and http://askaway.pbwiki.com/f/Fall+Press+Release+2.doc

 The National Library of Australia ran an online advertising campaign in mid-June to mid-September 2007 for the AskNow service. This was done by a local Canberra advertising agency (http://www.zooz.com.au/) in consultation with Mindshare Interactive in Sydney (http://www.mindshare.com.au/). Banner advertisements were used in various online networks - within the digital education presence of two major metropolitan newspapers, online rural press and higher education.  NLA staff are still looking at usage trends over the period to fully understand the impact of the campaign, to see if they were able to boost the usage of the service in rural/remote communities that cannot otherwise easily avail themselves of face-to-face library services.