Summary of the article: What are we really doing to the market electronic resources?

Summary of the article: What are we really doing to the market electronic resources?

Many libraries are utilizing electronic resources, but are not effectively marketing these resources. The article takes an in-depth look what their goals are in relation to their electronic resources.  It also looks at how libraries target and market these new resources and finally how they assess their marketing plan. The author, Marie Kennedy, does this by examining 24 documents on the topic of electronic resource marketing written by libraries. She looked at documents from university, public, college, medical libraries.   She found that there were four very common approaches to marketing electronic resources, these included patron training, flyers, emails and surveys. Overall 38 different methods were recognized. She found that libraries stated goals varied from vague to specific, but found that libraries target audience were very specific. Out of the 24 documents, 9 reported that they had no budget for marketing or didn’t mention it at all. She wrote about the evaluation of the marketing plans, “Evaluation is part of the cycle of marketing, and the results of that monitoring of activities assist in guiding the next steps in a marketing plan. In the review of the literature for this discussion, however, more than half of the libraries did not document a clear assessment plan as part of their cycles of marketing.” It’s clear from this article that libraries need to focus more on marketing. I think the best way for libraries to have librarians understand marketing is to teach it in libraries schools.  It might be a good idea for librarians to have a mandatory class on marketing.  Marketing is not just important for electronic resources but for promoting the library in general.

Kennedy, M. (2011). What are we really doing to market electronic resources? Library Management, 32(3), 144-158. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01435121111112862