Comments on: Didn’t know I needed to be a salesperson

By: Sandy Iverson

Sandy Iverson — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:22:05 +0000

When I went to Library School we were required to take a course in management, which included marketing. The problem however, in my opinion, lay more with the students attitudes than with the schools. When the professor of our management class asked 30+ students how many of us expected to be managers one day, only two of us self-identified. There was (is there still?) an extreme disconnect between what library school students THINK they will be doing and what they actually will be doing. Which just goes to show that library schools, library associations and libraries of all types are doing a lousy job at marketing… since not even students entering the field really know what it is that librarians do.

By: L. D. Mitchell

L. D. Mitchell — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:59:40 +0000

As the ALA’s recent report on the State of America’s Libraries suggests, if you intend for your library to survive, you’ve got to be its #1 salesperson….

By: Dan C

Dan C — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:03:10 +0000

If you’re a librarian in the corporate world, you’re expected to be able to market and sell your services. In fact, your job depends often on it.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:30:41 +0000

Thank you for writing this. I am starting to build up my knowledge of marketing in the academic library context and this was very useful. I also liked that you pointed at the challenges at serving different groups of users: distance students vs. graduate students vs. undergraduate students.

By: stevenb

stevenb — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:03:15 +0000

There’s no question that library workers can find business terminology, models and practices offputting. We’re not a business. They’re not customers. However, sometimes using a business concept is the easiest way to get a message across. You know what I mean. We can’t just sit on our butts and wait for people to find out about all the great stuff we offer. It’s up to us to create the awareness – and demonstrate why our services and resources add value. It may not be immediate obvious to a student or faculty member why using google scholar, properly configure, can actually lead you to library content.

Outreach, advocacy, promotion – those are all the sorts of things that salespeople do – although a real sales person is a bit pushier and may stretch the truth every now and then. That’s now what I expect a librarian to be doing. But salespeople also make calls to their potential customers. That makes sense because you never know when you will sell someone on the experience the product delivers.

Whatever you want to call it Merideth – I think you get it – and I’ve no doubt that you do a stellar job of “selling” what your library has to offer.

By: Sarah Scully

Sarah Scully — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:39:44 +0000

Marketing is a skill that librarians and, in many cases, paraprofessionals really need. Unfortunately, some parent organizations are not providing the tools we would like to use to expand marketing efforts. For example, my employer, Dartmouth College, is not supporting blogging (meaning that they are not providing server space and accounts for departments to set up official news/blog services). So anyone who wants to start posting news has to go outside the official web structure. This seems odd to me. As you have said before, in addition to teaching marketing in general (i.e. how to have conversations about what the library has to offer), LIS schools need to teach the technical skills used to effectively get those messages to an audience.

I’m in the online MLIS program at the University of North Texas and will be interested to see which of these components are included in their Academic Libraries class that I’ll be taking this fall. There’s also a separate marketing class, but I agree that this is not a good model, since students have the option of taking the class.

On a positive note, marketing and communication topics were mentioned in the library management course that I’m finishing up now, so there seems to be some degree of integration of these concepts into other courses.

By: Dan Owens

Dan Owens — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:41:22 +0000

As a current LIS student I am constantly struck by the gulf between what is taught in library schools (or at least taught well) and the concerns of practicing librarians. And nowhere is that more apparent than advocacy and marketing. As a former public policy advocate (and still a political junkie) I’m amazed how little most of my fellow students are know of the political environment in which libraries operate (and beg for funding). And it’s not just politics- few are able to truly articulate a coherent philosophy of why libraries are important and worthy of public support.

I am fortunate enough to attend a library school with an excellent instructor who teaches a “Marketing the Library” course. But she, while full-time, is not a professor. And library schools won’t give this the proper attention it deserves until somebody gets tenure for writing a killer library advocacy and marketing plan. Then again, I suppose it is that way for many of the skills librarians wish were taught in LIS schools.