Fundamentals of collection development and management, 3rd ed. Chapter 6 - Marketing, Liaison Activities, and Outreach

Riggs, Michelle


Johnson, P. (2014). Fundamentals of collection development and management (3rd ed.). Chicago, IL: ALA Editions.p. 251-284.


In Chapter 6, Marketing, Liaison Activities, and Outreach, Peggy Johnson addresses developing and implementing methods of keeping current with patron needs/wants and advertising what is available in the library. Johnson points out that all communication is promotion, whether formal or informal, and that its purpose is to inform and educate. She reviews the marketing cycle of market research, plan development, plan implementation, and exercising control. Johnson also discusses the importance of building relationships, breaking it down by type of library. For school media centers, Johnson points out that the target audience for liaisons and outreach include administrators, teachers, students, parents, and the general community.


This chapter was thought-provoking, as I tend to get wrapped up in teaching my classes and assisting students, so promotion takes a back seat. Several ideas appealed to me, including using bookmarks to promote services, which is very simple, yet I rarely take the time to design my own. Hand-delivering requested items also seems like an effective way to attach a face to the library and build relationships. I also need to be better about distributing a monthly newsletter or infographic within the school to publicize what we’ve been up to. Finally, we are all encouraged to have Twitter accounts in my district, so this could be a way for me to better promote the library within the community. As a fun aside, it was exciting to notice that Dr. Loertscher was cited in this chapter :)

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.