Today on the MAX, I heard a man ask a librarian about the state of the library…and her response both saddened and made me think. It took her no less than two seconds to respond: The state of the library is unstable and we need to come up with better ways to promote ourselves and our services.
In some ways, I agree with this librarian. We spend tons of money and expend lots of energy making sure that the services that we provide are of quality to our customers. We look at circulation rates and decide what to improve and toss based on this data. But are we spending enough time promoting what we have so that patrons can know how truly vital we are to our communities?
Social Media has made it easier than ever to promote ourselves to a much larger community and demographic of people. The Chattahoochee Valley Regional System does comprehensive marketing on facebook and twitter alone to ensure that we have a very visible presence with our patrons. In some ways this is invaluable, but it does not take from the fact that we still need to hit the ground running with face to face interactions with people. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve asked strangers if they had library cards, only to be responded with “why do I need one? I don’t read books.”
Its this fallacy of thinking that we need to change within our community. We are no longer the quiet, shushing centers of old. We are city and community centers with services as varied as the people who work in them. Maybe we should start promoting our selves by trying harder to use more personal marketing, as well as the other web 2.0 tools that we have at our disposal. Just saying 😀
The Library Insider 