LIS 9763

Libraries are places that people frequent for learning and pleasure reading.  Many visit libraries as a way of continuing their education once they have completed formal schooling.  As learning facilities we need to ensure that we are equipped with the staff and learning tools to meet the expectations of our customers, as well as make them aware of what we have to offer them.
 
This can be done with marketing, and of course with the many 2.0 tools that are available to us. Before implementing any types of software, David Lee King in his article Thinking about my space and other third-party services makes a point of saying that before libraries decide on using any form of technology they need to look at what it exactly offers. The example he gives of free ipods appearing on a myspace page for the library demonstrates who important this is. Can you imagine how disappointed the kids will feel when they come to the information desk and ask for a free ipod, and you tell them that they misread the library’s myspace page?
 
Libraries also have to consider the amount of time it takes to market and evaluate these types of tools. In Michael Sauers blog The Travellin’ Librarian  he addresses some good points about staff’s workload and 2.0.  As a library worker I understand that we all have assigned duties and adding several new ones can sometimes be overwhelming.  However, the suggestion in the article is made to redistribute the workload. This sounds like the appropriate way of handling the situation. The only consideration is the staff complement that a particular library has. It will be management’s role to look at the current duties of each staff member and see if it is possible to fairly divide the new tasks at hand.

Can this 2.0 help Librarians with promotion is another article that discusses some interesting points about marketing and libraries. The most interesting one that is made is when the author discusses how we do not do such a great job of using personal selling skills.  I think this has a lot to with the fact that libraries never had to do this before. We have always been institutions where customers would come to us. As times continue to change, I agree with Stephen Abram that we need to start learning selling techniques and strategies if we want to promote our services. We are a free service, but this does not mean that we do not have to sell our products and services to customers. As I stated before, we did not have to do this in the past but things have changed. More and more we are going to see that customers will not frequent our facilities as much if we do not promote the services we offer. They will simply go online and search through free sources and get whatever information they could locate. This will have a negative impact on libraries, where we will not be seen as the professionals that we are.

Let’s continue to promote our libraries with 2.0 tools, and market them with our personal skills. We can do this on a daily basis with our customers as they walk through our doors.