The library's product and excellence - Marketing of Library and Information Services

Abstract

In this time of transition for libraries, the use of marketing techniques to identify appropriate products (services, programs, and materials) and to evaluate the effectiveness of these products can be helpful. Libraries have failed to adopt or to recognize the use of marketing for three reasons: (1) a simple misunderstanding that equates marketing with the publicity and public relations function; (2) a lack of understanding of what marketing is and what it involves so that libraries fail to recognize many existing management and collection-development operations as marketing components; and (3) disagreement about the role of the client in determining the library's products and marketing mix. A modified marketing construct, that of a societal-marketing orientation which tries to balance the immediate demands of patrons with the long-term needs of society, may help to address the "good" versus "right" product argument. Product excellence can be defined in a number of ways including effectiveness, optimization of resources, and traditional library selection terms such as quality, timeliness, accuracy, completeness, and availability. The utilization of marketing theory and techniques improves the library's position and helps to assure that the library will be offering products which will be wanted and valued by a client group. Evidence of the value placed upon quality products will be provided by use statistics and political and fiscal support.

Introduction

For a number of years there have been those who have predicted the demise of the library as we have known it. The library literature is full of discussions of the virtual library, the library without walls, or the library as gateway rather than as warehouse. These discussions raise questions about the "contents" of the new library of the future. What will this library look like? What services, programs, and materials will be offered? How can we find answers to important questions about such things as: the relationship of access to ownership; the appropriate content and extent of collections; the right mix of services for a specific community of potential clients; and sources of adequate support for library activities? In order to address these concerns, we must first determine what the role of the library is to be. What is the business of the library? It is the answer to this question which is the crucial first step in defining the future. Once a role is selected or the business is defined, the staff can begin to translate the organization's identity into appropriate products to be offered to clients. At least for public libraries, the American Library Association's publication, Planning and Role Setting for Public Libraries (McClure et al., 1987) has done much to institutionalize the steps in establishing a specific role for the individual library and to formalize plans for implementation of that role through the provision of appropriate products in the form of services, materials, and programs. The process of identifying and formalizing a role and mission has become accepted practice in even the smallest public library. However, the relationship of roles to products is not well established in all libraries.

Marketing offers both a theory and a process by which libraries can link products, results, and roles. Marketing can assist libraries in determining their future and in identifying quality products-services, programs, and materials. A marketing audit and the resulting plan can contribute to a library's ability to find a niche in the present as well as in the future and to fill that niche by an optimal allocation of resources. A marketing orientation can assist libraries in defining their role and in guaranteeing their future. Marketing provides a theoretical framework within which to address the specific library and information science questions facing public, school, special, and academic libraries in both the public and private sectors. What the library will look like and what it will offer as products can be determined through the use of modern marketing theory and practice.

If marketing provides tools that will assist libraries in their attempt to define themselves and their roles, why have librarians and governing authorities been slow to adopt the strategies of modern marketing despite the initial enthusiasm exhibited within the profession? This failure to consciously adopt marketing in library practice may be because of at least one of the following reasons: a misunderstanding of marketing and its application in the library environment; a failure to recognize and understand a marketing orientation and its processes even when they are present; or a disagreement with the basic tenet of marketing that places the emphasis upon the client rather than the product, the profit, or the organization itself. The first explanation for the failure of the library community to embrace marketing is the easiest to address and to remedy. The fact that many misunderstand what marketing is and equate it with a sort of sophisticated public relations effort is fairly easy to address. While this misunderstanding is quite widespread, it can be handled by providing better information and education about marketing theory and process. Such information can present the broader implications of marketing and can place the publicity and public relations components of a marketing plan within the larger context of a total marketing plan.