I totally agree with you that we also need to market the librarians (and other library staff) as well as the resources and space for study which are often the focus of marketing. Something which really stuck with me following a marketing event I attended was something Terry Kendrick mentioned – that most people aren’t interested in the “stuff” the library has, so stop trying to market the “stuff”, and instead market how you can help people achieve their goals (usually assignments in the case of academic libraries). I think all too often in libraries we focus our efforts on marketing new resources or services, whereas we really need to demonstrate how people can use the library and library staff to help them.

Thanks for including a link to ASU Libraries, it’s always interesting to see what other libraries are doing, particularly from further afield than the UK. Library Minute is great, and I love the open online comments – it’s great to see them and the responses publicly accessible, and really helps build the human side to the library

I appreciate you can’t cover all users within the scope of the book, and think it makes it more interesting by focusing on students – my dissertation is likely to mainly focus on marketing to students. However, my own place of work is currently trying to ensure we consider the needs of other users as the vast majority of our efforts are in supporting students (not academics, support staff, business links, or the local community).

http://lib.asu.edu/

Perhaps you could weave what other academic libraries in the world are doing into your dissertation to give context.

I am passionate about library marketing. It can take many forms and it is important to know one’s audience. I read an article recently about making sure that we market librarians, not just libraries. I have forgotten the name of the writer, to my shame. It made me notice how much we bang on about libraries but we forget to mention (loudly) the librarians. I think a good marketing approach should emphaise the librarians and what they can do for the patrons, not just the library and the collection. That is one of the reasons I like ASU’s approach – because it puts a human (librarian) face at the forefront of its marketing (in the Library Minute). Students can relate to a friendly, smiling face and realise that this person is a librarian who wants to help them with their studies. Somewhere I read that the thing people want most from organizations is ‘friendly help’. Students want help to do their studies and they like to deal with people who are friendly. So if our marketing targets these two things I think we are well on the way to successful marketing. Good luck with your dissertation. Kind regards, Caroline Anderson, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Just catching up with your last few blog posts through the old Google Reader, thanks for the mention. Happy New Year!!