[WEB4LIB] RE: marketing, the "imminent demise of librarianship," andskill development

[Fiona Bradley]

>>> Jesse Ephraim <JEphraim at ci.southlake.tx.us> 19/11/2004 7:15:54 am
>>>
>During graduate school (the first time) in the early 90's I worked
for
>several years in a bookstore.  The manager encouraged all the
employees
>to come up with creative marketing ideas and help to implement them.
>The basic principles I learned there have served me well in all my
jobs,
>in the library and elsewhere.  There is nothing wrong with borrowing
a
>few concepts from the retail world, especially since we are (in SOME
>ways - note the caps) in competition with the large chain bookstores
and
>Amazon.  Library schools need to start requiring classes in realistic
>library marketing.  More business management courses wouldn't hurt,
>either.

My marketing beef: most librarians seem completely unaware that there
is a whole world of marketing out there that's more suitable for us:
non-profit and arts marketing. I keep seeing calls for us to learn
marketing but simply borrowing what is designed for a profit-based world
and putting it into libraries doesn't work. Which is why, IMHO, we
haven't been very successful so far! Apart from targeted marketing
skills, we also need to learn how to lobby and advocate for libraries
and our services, which is different from marketing. 

But back to the topic of Google... 

I see many flaws in Google Scholar and a lot of potential,, but really
it's very similar to Metalib and other database portals that many
universities already provide. I think the real power of Google Scholar
could come from opening up access to scholarly information for the rest
of us, the unaffiliated user who still needs to access scholarly
information for whatever reason, but who can't get access through ILL,
reciprocal arrangements, or local libraries. I would like to know more
about it so I can integrate it with my new library portal/OPAC here at
work, because we don't subscribe to any of the big scholarly databases.

Of course, one day, all scholarly information will be Open Access and
we won't have to worry about these issues, right? ;-)

cheers,
Fiona



Acting Assistant Manager
SBS Radio Resource Centre
Locked Bag 028 
Crows Nest NSW 2065

Ph: (02) 9430 2862
Email: fiona.bradley at sbs.com.au