Libraries - and services within libraries - like reference services -need to constantly justify their existence and their allocation and expenditure of funds so more than ever, they are involved in the process of promoting and marketing their goods, services and facilities. This is a dynamic process which requires constant monitoring, modification, new concepts and ideas. Effective marketing activities and strategies of reference services ensures that services and products are made available that satisfy patrons and maintain the profile of the reference services section within the library.
Why Marketing?
Information professionals must understand that it is essential to actively market their services. Library marketing is critical for any information professional in order to spread the word about their library. It doesn’t matter what library type, it doesn’t matter how large or small the library is - you need to draw attention to your library, your services, your worth to your community, your administration, your staff, and your users.
Promotion:
Promotion is essentially the means of informing to users what you do and what you can do. The benefits for those who promote their library services include: increased usage, increased value in the organisation, education of users and changed perceptions.The promotional plan emerges from the marketing plan. It is to do with how to achieve the objectives that have been forecast. It involves: a description of the service requiring publicity; description of the audience at which publicity is targeted; details of the campaign method to be employed including type of publicity to be used and method(s) of distribution; execution of campaign; analysis of campaign performance. The setting of clear promotional objectives will also ensure that the success of the advertising campaign can be evaluated. From time to time it should be accepted that promotional activities have not met their objectives.
Social media , Libraries, and Web 2.0
According to Wikipedia social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense social media is a shift in how people discover, read, and share news, information and content. It s a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue to dialogue and is a democratisation of information, transforming people from content reader to publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the on line world to form relationships for personal ans business.
Additionally web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design that facilitates communication, secure information sharing , interoperability and collaboration on World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web- basedcommunities, hosted services, application such as social networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs,and folksonomies.In many cases the terms social media and Web 2.0 are interchangeable and are widely used to describe the same concepts related to on line communities and sharing on line information and resources. While the term Web 2.0 refers to the actual applications available to Internet users , the term social media refers more broadly to the concepts of how these applications are used and communities built on line.
The following are links to a variety of libraries using Facebook, Twitter and blogs. There are many more libraries using these tools to promote their services, this is just a brief selection for you to view.
The Barr Smith Library http://www.facebook.com/barrsmithlibrary
Blog post: The most "influential" Libraries on Twitter?The British Library http://twitter.com/#!/britishlibrary
Library Blogs
Education Library Blog, University of Pretoria http://edulibpretoria.wordpress.com/
marketing and promotion of library services and resources are very important for their longevity. We have seen too many library closures of late, especially in the USA and UK (some just dramatic reduction of hours while other smaller libraries closing the doors permanently) and recently here in QLD with small govt libraries under the hammer, a reduction in funding to TAFE libraries across the nation ... I often feel this is because there is a lack of understanding of the real role of the library and the librarian. Let us stand up and be counted!!!
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