LIS 9763

 Marketing and Evaluation - two topics that many of us struggle with in our positions.  We like to think that if we build these really cool 2.0 services that we "know" the younger generation of students are using - that they will indeed come.  Let's think about it - if the students are on facebook all day long - why wouldn't they use a library facebook presence to interact with us?  Or - we know students prefer to find information online and may prefer to avoid coming in to talk to a real person - so why wouldn't they use your blog or incorporate your web site's RSS feeds?  Makes perfect sense based on studies and observations that many of us make while walking through libraries.
 
So -  we build and they don't come - why?  Some cases they're just NOT aware these services exist - this is where marketing comes in.  Cool attractive webpages, mentioning services in classes and at the reference desks - we think these actions help to attract students - but - I learned the other day from a couple of first year students - that...  hang on...  you know those silly bookmarks many of us create for marketing purposes just because - well...  This is what the 1st year students use.  I was completely blown away - all the time and effort we put into creating news feeds, cute-images, taglines and the such for our online services - and they LOVE and USE those bookmarks.  I asked why?  The answer I got - "we need bookmarks, the web address is on the back of it, and they're convenient."  WOW - I was surprised and will keep this in mind.
 
I think the other half of this topic is probably more important - Evaluation.  How do we evaluate whether a service, whether it's a 2.0 technology or not - is valued and used?  I can do the simple webhit counts - but that tells me nothing.  Just because someone touched my website, a blog for instance doesn't tell me whether they found it useful or helpful.  Sending out questionnaires - aren't we all tired of answering questionnaires these days?  We can make it easy - an email with a quick question - then we're clogging up email boxes and there's no guarantee students read their university email.  So - how do we evaluate?  Focus groups? incentives? That all takes us resources that we may just not have today...  I think this is truly an area where a lot of work needs to be done - we need to come up with new and innovative ways of evaluating our 2.0 services.
 
In the end, if I want my service to survive and get used - I'll market it "somehow" maybe through bookmarks?  and then use all the data I can muster to ensure that I have as an objective measure as possible to show management that my service is viable and being used.
 
Michelle