THE VISIBLE LIBRARIAN: ADVOCACY AND MARKETING

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THE VISIBLE LIBRARIAN ADVOCACY AND MARKETING

• Judith Siess
• Information Bridges International
• SLA Virtual Seminar
• 19 November 2003

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Who Am I?

• Librarian since 1982 (UIUC, GSLIS, MSLIS)
• First job, solo for biotechnology research
  company
• Other positions NASA, contract chemical RD
  firm, manufacturer of controls for industrial
  processes.
• In 1996, left corporate America to start my own
  companyto build bridges between librarians in
  the USA and the rest of the world.
• 1997, Guy St. Clair offered me The One-Person
  Library newsletter, changing my life.
• Now
• Editor and publisher of OPL with 400 subscribers
  (one-third outside the USA)
• Author of 4 books from 3 different publishers
• Presenter of workshops around the world (Berlin,
  London, Barcelona, Vancouver, New York, San
  Francisco, etc.)
• But, most importantly, I am a librarianand proud
  of it!

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POLLING QUESTIONWhat is the size of your library
staff?

• 1 FTE or less professional, NO support staff
• 1 FTE or less professionals, With support staff
• 2-5 professionals
• Over 5 professionals

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Why the VISIBLE librarian?

• After Harry Beckwiths book, Selling the
  Invisible A Field Guide to Modern Marketing.
• The invisible is service.

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Topics to be covered

• Customer Service
• Marketing
• Publicity
• Public Relations
• Advocacy

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Customer Service is Job 1

• What do customers expect?
• To be appreciated. To get what they ordered.
  Accurate, timely, and valuable information.
  Friendly employees. An attractive and easy-to-use
  facility. A wide and well-reasoned selection of
  resources.
• But most importantly, customers want their
  problems solved.

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The convenience catastrophe

• Trying to make customers self-sufficient, often
  in the name of empowerment, or even library
  education
• Do our customers really want to do our jobs? Of
  course not.
• Our customers want and need intermediaries they
  want and need service.

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POLLING QUESTIONDo You Market?

• Which of the following marketing activities have
  you engaged in?
• Open House
• Brochure
• User Training
• Newsletter
• User Survey
• Needs Assessment
• Web Page

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Marketing The Five Ws and an H

• Why
• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• How

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Why market?

• If no one knows about your library and how it can
  help your customers meet their goals, the library
  will notand should notcontinue to exist.
• Overlooked eventually can mean unemployed.

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Who Should Market?

• You, the librarian. Why?
• No one else will do it for you.
• You know your library better than anyone else.
• You knowor should knowyour organization and
  customers best.
• No one has more to gain from marketing or more to
  lose if you dont market.

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What to Market?

• Current products and services.
• Products and services you could provide if there
  was funding or support.
• But remember, the real product of your library is
  answers!

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Questions???
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More on whatWho is your competition?

• The Internet? Direct sales by vendors to the
  end-user? Asking a nearby colleague? Making a
  phone call to another library or information
  center?
• None of the above. The librarys biggest and most
  dangerous competitor is simply
• doing without.

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Who are your customers?

• What do they need? How do you find out what your
  customers need or want?
• Ask them!
• Combination of survey and interviews.
• Dont forget to include people who are not
  library users. Ask them why dont they use the
  library. Have they encountered problems with
  service or staff in the past that have turned
  them off of the library?

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When to Market?

• Always.
• They are especially receptive at the time of
  need.
• You can also cross-sellwhen you deliver one
  piece of information, you can also promote
  another product or service.

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Where to Market?

• Within your own institution or community.
• To present customers.
• To possible customers.
• To the people with the money.
• To customers outside your institution.

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How to Market?

• Marketing is not hard.
• It just takes organization and some good ideas.
• Make a plan.

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Ranganthan Does Marketing

• Library Resources Are for Use.
• If a resource is not being used, it should be
  either eliminated or marketed.
• Every Customer His or Her Library Resources.
• It is not enough to make customers happy. We must
  delight them.
• Do more than they expect.
• Every Library Resource Its Customer.
• Positioning.
• Branding.
• Save the Time of the Customer.
• The librarians mantra better, cheaper, and
  faster.
• Better is subjective, cheaper is often
  irrelevant, BUT, faster is a measurable benefit.
• A Library Is a Growing Organism.
• Nothing is constant.
• Make it easy for your customers to tell you what
  you did well and what was done poorly.

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Questions???
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PublicityThe Tangibles

• Definition everything that is on paper or in
  electronic form.

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Good Publicity

• Keep it simple.
• Tailor your publicity to the audience you want to
  reach.
• Make sure it still looks professional.
• But, dont obsess over itits only a small part
  of your job.

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Brochures

• If you do one, make it a good one.
• Use targeted brochures.
• Make it eye-catching and professional.
• Try a question-and answer format.
• Get them to your customers!

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Business Cards

• Make your card (and you) stand out.
• But dont be too different.
• Use your brand (style).
• Use your degrees.

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Newsletters

• Every library should have a newsletter.
• What to include?
• Have a consistent format and regular schedule.
• A just-in-time e-mail newsletter is
  interactive, current, inexpensive, cheap, and
  easy.
• How about different newsletters for different
  audiences?

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Bulletin Boards and Display Cases

• Easy and cheap.
• Use a portable easel for a portable bulletin
  board.
• Think of a display case as a super-board.
• Change all displays frequently.

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Giveaways

• Use your established color scheme and mascot or
  slogan.
• Put on everything the librarys name, address,
  phone and fax numbers, e-mail address, and URL
• Quality is important.

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Your signature can sell

• Keep it short, simple, and discreet.
• Included in my sig file
• Judith A. Siess
• President, Information Bridges International,
  Inc. /I\B/I\
• Editor/Publisher of The One-Person Library
• Author of The Visble Librarian Asserting Your
  Value Through Marketing and Advocacy, ALA Editions

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Your Web Page

• Content is king.
• Set up internal electronic discussion groups or
  bulletin boards to facilitate communication
  within the organization or with outsiders.
• Keep it short and simple.
• Have the links your customers need.

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Your web site, continued

• Make it easy for customers to submit new sites,
  suggestions, questions, and requests.
• Try personalized library portals.
• Post photos of the library or library events.
• Think like your customers.
• Plan a campaign to make your users aware of the
  web site.

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Public Relations The Personal Touch

• Get out of the library! Deliver items to
  customers in person. Visit a department you know
  little about or in which you have few customers.
  Visit major branch locations.
• Try an Open House. Planning is the key, but food
  brings them in. National Library Week is okay,
  but Follow up afterwards.
• Look at your library. Is it inviting? Can the
  customer find information without help? Can he or
  she find you? Will he or she want to come back?
• Call into your own library. Is the greeting
  friendly, accurate, and clear? Ask a question.
  When youre not there

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Prepare an elevator speech and a 30-second
commercial

• Elevator speech
• Start with a provocative statement or question.
  Introduce yourself. Make the pitch. Request
  action.
• 30-second commercial
• Tell them who you are, what you do, and what you
  can do for them.

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Questions???
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AdvocacyPutting it all Together

• No one sees us.
• reading reviews
• reading manuals
• following electronic discussions
• cataloging
• searching for a hard-to-find article
• searching five different databases
• going to budget meetings
• buttonholing management to get a few more dollars
  for the library

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How did we get into this mess?

• Customers dont know the work (and money) that
  went into making online resources available.
• We concentrate too much on saving money.

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Put your money where your mouth is, sir.

• Support from management or the community must be
  accompanied by money or it is worthless.

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What Can We Do?

• Stop moaning.
• Align yourself with the strategic objectives of
  the parent organization.
• Communicate your worth to management, in their
  own language. Show that the value of what you do
  easily meets or exceeds the amount spent on the
  library.

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Dealing with budget cuts

• Explain the consequences of the cut to
  management.
• No money, no service.
• Cut services that will hurt someone.

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Champions

• You need all the supporters you can get.
• At as high a level as you can.
• Let your champions stand up and fight for your
  and your library.

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Professionalism Its More Than a Suit

• Yes, dress the part, but it is more important to
  act the part.
• Continuing education is absolutely imperative.
  Youll have to find it and maybe even for it.
• Network! A network is everyone you know that who
  can help you or whom you can help. Must be
  reciprocal.
• Give back to the profession. You learned from and
  were helped by others and should do the same for
  colleagues and students.
• Do something to improve the publics perception
  of a librarian. Be proud to be a librarian.

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What image do we want?

• To become the person who reaches out to others to
  bring them the answersor perhaps the means to
  discover those answers for themselves?

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Changing in the phone booth

• It is time to take off our cloak of invisibility,
  timidity, complacency, and modesty and reveal
  ourselves to the world as we really are and can
  be
• The Visible Librarian!

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POLLING QUESTION 3Now What?

• What is the first thing you are going to do after
  this seminar?
• Plan a marketing event
• Perform a needs analysis or user survey
• Hire or appoint a marketing expert
• Nothing
• Other

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Questions???
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THANK YOU!

• For more help, contact me (no charge)
• Email jsiess_at_ibi-opl.com
• Phone [phone]
• Fax [phone]
• Our next seminar is on
• December 3, 2003 from 200-330 PM ET
• Business Planning Building the Plan and the
  Buy-in