The Library as a Product

Asuman Tezcan
INFO 266
Fall 2015

The Library as a Product

Mathews, Brians. (2009). The Library as a Product. In Marketing Today's Academic Library a Bold New Approach to Communicating with Students. Chicago: American Library Association.

Mathews claims that not only books and research materials but also quiet reading rooms, helpful staff, comfortable atmosphere are the products of libraries. He offers to accept library as a marketplace and to develop communication strategies with patrons. Equipment, space (individual and group working areas), support (reference desk, interlibrary loan services) and experiences (patrons') are main products of libraries. And we can add tutoring, advising and other services. Taking model Nike regarding bundling the products as a marketing strategy, Mathews offers that libraries can bundle their services and products. He also suggests "designing portfolios" to attract different "user groups". Brian summarizes his point in this sentence “In essence we are designing the library for consumption.”    

Evaluation: I did not find the authors’ analogies strong enough between marketplace and library. Giving better service to the users and increasing productivity does not necessarily require putting parallelism between market and library. These qualifications are already nature of information services.