Book Review: The Library PR Handbook: high-impact communications edited by Mark R. Gould

Disclosure: I received a free copy of the book to review directly from the publisher, ALA Editions.

This small book, just over one hundred pages, covers a variety of public relations and marketing concepts that apply to public libraries. The fourteen chapters can be divided into two categories; practical ideas and high level strategies. I will review these two broad themes and then offer some general observations. While I found the book useful, I would say that it is would not be appropriate as an introduction. If you are looking for a more systematic introduction to library marketing and PR, I would refer you to The Accidental Library Marketer by Kathy Dempsey (here is my review of it). That said, the ideas presented here are quite creative and would make for good discussion.

Several chapters of the book offer high level strategies that instruct the reader on how to understand audiences and connect with their needs. The two articles informed by the Metropolitan Group – “Building a Community: Empowering People as Messengers” and “Building Public Will for Libraries” – articulate the big picture of marketing public libraries particularly well. These articles walk you through the steps of connecting what libraries to values that people already have. The authors point out: “Public will building acknowledges that trying to change or teach new values is extremely difficult and often threatening.” (25) The chapter on messengers describes how to recruit others who value the library to articulate that to decision makers. Acting with allies is particularly important in circumstances where ethics codes and restraints on public servants bar them from getting involved in politics or campaigning. For libraries that serve ethnically diverse populations, the opening chapter “Increasing Relevance, Relationships, and Results: Principles and Practices for Effective Multicultural Communication,” will be invaluable. The greatest strength of that chapter is that each point is reinforced by both a library and non-library case study to show the reader how it was all done.

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Welcome to the Library; a case study on orientation

“If no one knows about [the] library and how it can help its community meet its goals, the library will not – and should not – continue to exist.”
- Judith A. Siess, The Visible Librarian: Asserting Your Value with Marketing and Advocacy (2003)

Communicating the value of library services to users is one of my professional interests. On this blog, I have previously posted a review of Brian Matthew’s book on marketing the academic library. It is a subject that interests me in other contexts as there is good research that shows that librarians undersell themselves and the value that they provide. That research also shows that we have a language problem – users don’t understand technical terms like “information literacy” or “reference.” It is a tall order to expect non-librarians to understand that sort of specialized terminology – we need to use language that people understand already.

In addition to general principles of marketing, I like to look at specific case studies. this article about the marketing efforts at the University of Western Ontario and its effort to connect with students during orientation week (sometimes called “frosh week” or “freshman week”). The motto of the 2005 orientation program for the library was, “Just Try to Graduate Without Us!” which strikes me as a playful challenge. The librarians running this campaign also measured the impact of their outreach in engagement with students. Beyond the statistical data, there is one quote from this article that really captures the spirit of the piece: “Undergraduate students who had no affiliation with the library offered to volunteer in the Tent in order to encourage their peers to learn more about Western Libraries.”

The concept of orientation could be applied in non-academic contexts as well. For example, when new lawyers or accountants are hired in a firm (or government or a non-profit), do they meet a librarian on their first day or week of work? They should. There are several different ways to go about this. One method is to ask people to visit the library (or comparable area) and offer a presentation (maybe snacks too?). Another approach, which strikes me as possibly more successful, is to offer to meet each new person. Go to their office instead of having them come to yours. This may not work with everyone but I think it is important to make a positive impression as much as possible.

Book Review: “Marketing Today’s Academic Library,” by Brian Matthews

Published in March 2009, Brian Matthew’s book Marketing Today’s Academic Library: a bold new approach to communicating with students has informed my thinking about marketing and how librarians think about their services and users of those services. As I was eager to read it, I had the order the book directly from the publisher which doesn’t make international orders easy (i.e. I had to send a fax using Skype – if Amazon can easily ship to Canada, I don’t see why the ALA can’t). With the main text of the book coming to 162 pages, the book is a fast read with an emphasis on the practical details of marketing the academic library to students. The focus of the book is very much on undergraduate students and grapples with that challenge well. If you are mainly looking for a work about marketing the library to faculty or administrators, then you should look elsewhere. That said, assisting students to excell in their studies can’t make you look bad no matter what. The “big picture” aspect of the book that struck me as particularly insightful was the idea that ‘marketing’ in this context is really about satisfying users and making the environment, products and services of the Library meet those needs. I also very much appreciated the research-driven bent to the book: no campaign should be launched without some research to support it. The book’s prologue and the biographical element of the first chapter also proved an engaging opening to the world of marketing and what it means for academic librarians – the publisher (or author? I’m unsure how the rights would work for this) would do well to offer the prologue and first chapter for free.

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An Introduction to Marketing

Marketing is something I’ve been thinking about a fair bit these days; marketing myself as a new professional, marketing information services to users and more. For some in the profession, marketing is misunderstood to mean crass manipulation or something that evil corporations engage in. I’ve learned about marketing through some practical experience, reading in the field (e.g. the chapter on marketing in The Portable MLIS is a good introduction), reading Seth Godin’s blog, and The ‘M’ Word:Marketing Libraries: A blog designed to bring the wonderful world of marketing to librarians. If we develop create services that few people use, then what are we really accomplishing?

Learning from other efforts in the field is another good way to learn about marketing. Back in January, I had the opportunity to benefit from a presentation by Janine Schmidt, the Trenholme Director of Libraries at McGill University, (her presentation slides are available in a CASLIS Occasional Paper, starting on page 39). The approach used here is instructive; we start by observing the information habits of the users, their perceptions of the Library, and what they want out of the Library. Only after this background research is set up can you proceed to thinking about branding tools, strategies and so forth. One interesting, and possibly unique, idea involves requiring casual staff to wear t-shirts. Trying to figure out who is an employee when many (or all?) of your casual employees look like students might be difficult, after all.

Another slide raises the idea of “house calls” – visiting departments to promote library services and showing users how we can make their lives easier and more productive. I’m sad to say that I can’t recall a single in-class presentation from a Librarian in any of my undergraduate or graduate classes – well, maybe once or twice in my whole seven years of study at university. Getting agreement from professors should not be that difficult. If we say something like, “Hi Professor Jones, I would like to present to your Economics 101 (or History or what ever it might be) class for 10 minutes on the first day of class. I want to show them how library services and staff can help them learn better, write better papers and earn better grades.,” I cannot see too many academics turning us down. Then you go to the class, give a good presentation (reviewing Presentation Zen might be helpful in that regard), bring business cards and wish everyone well.