Calendar items are a great way to get your seminars, meetings, special presentations, readings, exhibits, surveys and fun events in front of your most interested audience.
Bonus: The redesign of MyVU means that your calendar items are a lot more likely to get picked up for publication. BUT. They need to be written in a format that lends itself to that kind of highlight.
Information basics:
- Calendar items should have the basic “five Ws and H” (who, what, when, where, why and how) in a concise, straightforward format. If an event is virtual, type “Virtual” in the location field. Then include the registration/zoom/website link in the description field.
- It’s also good to keep a standard “boilerplate” paragraph about your organization that you can paste onto the end of your current item—people don’t always know what you’re about. It’s likely this paragraph already exists on a website, in a brochure, on a flyer on the wall. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Images:
- Images need to be less than 50KB, and in JPG, PNG or GIF format. Information in the image (like a flyer) cannot stand in for the information in the description field. Screen readers do not pick up text on images, so that information is not accessible to people with visual impairments or who use screen readers because they learn better by listening. The recommended approach is a standalone image.
What information is needed:
- Title of event
- Date/time/location
- Description of event
- Contact information for event
- Any necessary links
Example guest speaker:
HED: ‘Title of talk’: Guest Name, Guest Institution
(enter date/time/location information in the proper fields)
Description Field:
Guest Name, the author of Book Title, will speak at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 4, in the upstairs gallery of the Vanderbilt Bookstore.
Name will speak about “Title of Talk,” a new aspect of the wide-ranging and highly regarded research they have done into the topic. Name, who is title at Institution, is visiting as a guest of the Vanderbilt Astronomy Group. The group is a part of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
The event is free and open to the public; reservations are requested.