Proactive Marketing for the New and Experienced Library Director: Going Beyond the Gate Count

Academic libraries have continually looked for technological solutions to low circulation statistics, under-usage by students and faculty, and what is perceived as a crisis in relevance, seeing themselves in competition with Google and Wikipedia. Academic libraries, however, are as relevant as they have been historically, as their primary functions within their university missions have not changed, but merely evolved. Going beyond the Gate Count argues that the problem is not relevance, but marketing and articulation. This book offers theoretical reasoning and practical advice to directors on how to better market the function of the library within and beyond the home institution. The aim of this text is to help directors, and ultimately, their librarians and staff get students and faculty back into the library, as a result of better articulation of the library’s importance. The first chapter explores the promotion of academic libraries and their function as educational systems. The next two chapters focus on the importance of the role social media and virtual presence in the academic library, and engaging and encouraging students to use the library through a variety of methods, such as visually oriented special collections. Remaining chapters discuss collaboration and collegiality, formalized reporting and marketing.

Offers clear, concise writing, with thoughtful discussions of the problems facing academic libraries Demonstrates comprehensive and thoughtful research that informs theoretical approaches to realistic outcomes that address these problemsProvides helpful tables, illustrations, and photographs that evidence the collaborative nature of contemporary academic librariesProvides practical examples from actual experiences that can be adapted by readers

So you’ve inherited an academic library: Promotion through physical space; The academic library as an educational system; Your virtual presence should not go virtually ignored; The library website: From Facebook to face-to-face; Getting your “friends” into the library; Social media as marketing: Virtual spaces and virtual messages; Engaging students through the arts and the humanities: Meaningful programming; Getting students back into the library; Beats and bongos lead them to books; Librarians in the laboratory; Partnered programming in the sciences and social sciences; Using visually-oriented special collections materials to engage the community; Documents, figurines, high-def movie stills, clothing, and photography; Using special collections materials and creating learning centers to engage the community: Historic instruments, films, tools and toys; Collegiality and collaboration: Marketing the library and its librarians to faculty; Reports and rapport: Marketing the library to all stakeholders