Library Marketing

Charleston Briefings: Trending Topics for Information Professionals is a thought-provoking series of brief books concerning innovation in the sphere of libraries, publishing, and technology in scholarly communication. The briefings, growing out of the vital conversations characteristic of the Charleston Conference and Against the Grain, will offer valuable insights into the trends shaping our professional lives and the institutions in which we work.

The Charleston Briefings are written by authorities who provide an effective, readable overview of their topics—not an academic monograph. The intended audience is busy nonspecialist readers who want to be informed concerning important issues in our industry in an accessible and timely manner.

Why do librarians have so many problems with marketing?

At a time when universities and colleges demand that libraries demonstrate their value and users have so many other options to discover information, it seems bizarre that librarians would be so much against a tool that allows them to engage closely with the very users who are the lifeblood of libraries.

As Jill Heinze makes clear in this lively and passionate briefing, marketing is a tool that allows an institution to assess their place in a market and to communicate value to their users based on the users’ needs and problems. This marketing tool need have no relationship to traditional business concerns, and, indeed, mission- based marketing is now important even to for- profit institutions.

Embracing key marketing concepts and planning, says Heinze, can demand that libraries rethink organizational structures, operations, and missions, but she also demonstrates that this rethinking can be entirely commensurate with the mission of libraries within an educational context.