Marketing your library

May 2008 ECO-ICONIC
via trendwatching.com by newsletter@trendwatching.com on 5/5/08

Trendwatching is a great resource for looking at what consumers are into in the past and probably the next quarter at least. Their newsfeed is free and summarizes parts of their not-free reports. If I were a marketer or PR person, even for a lowly library, I think I'd make sure to read the feed and try to afford some of the reports.

This quarter they discussed how Eco-friendly sells, sells, sells. A library could really do a great job of advertising how eco-friendly they are for the consumer, especially on the Reuse portion fo the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle part of the Eco-friendly equation. No, it doesn't do much on the publisher's end, but on the green end of the equation a library's collection is The Way To Go. Not to mention our e-books and e-audio and even e-video collections today.

One problem libraries run into is their inability to turn on a dime and capture this audience while the iron is hot. With budgets and time at a minimum, I wonder how libraries could capture this trend?

Great Resources for librarians

We use the Internet Public Library. We use the Librarian's Internet Index. We use a lot of great online resources. I've found some of the libraryland feeds I monitor to be treasure troves.

Here's a good example. It does not give legal advice, but it does give public libraries or anyone in a public area a good research starting place:


Blog Answers Legal Reference Questions Related to Homelessness
via PLA Blog by Kathleen Hughes on 5/12/08