“If you build it, they will come,” is a quote from the movie Field of Dreams in which the main character builds a baseball field to achieve his dream of having some famous players of the past come to play one more ultimate game of baseball.
It is a great quote. But a library or learning organization knows just building a great program, service or product; does not necessarily mean that they will come to take advantage of it.
I have heard that libraries use various methods to promote what the library is doing, such as internal marketing committees and:
-Inviting non-marketing staff to contribute
-Encouraging projects and promotions be done proactively among branches and departments
-Creating a collection of testimonial stories from patrons
-Developing a contest or theme to promote a specific service
-Connecting heritage/history month celebrations to promotions of ancestry research reference materials, databases and programs available at the library.
Does your public library have any successful promotions and campaigns you would like to share?
How does your academic library get the word out on campus to students and new faculty?
How does your library or learning organization market its value, programs and services?
Please share your thoughts and comments.
Eileen Hardy
RUSA Marketing Specialist
Our academic library has added a couple of things in the past year to make communication with faculty and grad students easier—“you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink”—nothing guarantees that these get read, but we are now doing a quarterly library newsletter that goes out electronically with updates and announcements from various departments in the library. This newsletter is written by revolving members of the various library departments and covers a variety of topics. Readers canread just the topic headings or the entire story on a topic. If you're interested in taking a look go http://www.lib.iastate.edu/ and in the left banner it says “Your Library Newsletter”. This is one way we're communicating; however, our other new method is the alumni newsletter that goes out in the mail called “Bookmarks”. If you have questions you can contact me directly.
Diana