A promotional video created by the UT Libraries has won two national awards.

Librarians Being Awesome won the award for Best Performance at the Association of Research Libraries Film Festival in Vancouver, Canada, on April 26. UT’s entry was selected for the top performance award out of 57 films submitted by 36 universities.

Librarians Being Awesome also was recognized by the Library Leadership and Management Association as an excellent example of electronic advocacy materials. The UT Libraries will be presented with a PR Xchange Award at the American Library Association’s annual conference in June.

Librarians Being Awesome is just what it sounds like—but in this instance the librarians were captured on film giving their best athletic performances.

The video was the capstone to the Libraries’ “Information Is Our Game” sports-themed marketing campaign. The campaign began with trading cards (like baseball cards) for each librarian. One side of each trading card pictures a librarian on the baseball field, the tennis court—even the Vols’ locker room. The verso is the librarian’s curriculum vitae.

The trading cards were followed by several whimsical videos depicting librarians pitted against top-notch athletes. The good humored librarians lost every contest. But, of course, the videos were really touting the librarians’ prowess as information professionals.

The entire marketing campaign was meant to convey a simple message: there is a designated librarian with subject expertise in your field of study.

Some of UT’s librarians are in fact accomplished athletes, so the capstone video features athletically gifted library faculty and staff just being awesome. The video even features clips of the dean of libraries juggling and an associate dean twirling a baton.

The award-winning video has been viewed thousands of times on YouTube and as a “bumper” (a brief ad that runs before the main feature) on the UT campus’ free movie streaming channel.