Quantum² Framework : Other Resources - Articles : Marketing

Marketing

Filling the planning vacuum
Doug Church
Information Outlook February 1998

Focus on the library customer: revelation, revolution, or redundancy?
Diane Tobin
Johnson Library Trends 43(3) 318-25.

The library's product and excellence
Mary C. Bushing
Library Trends 43(3): 384-400.

The marketing audit: baseline for action
Laura Cram
Library Trends 43(3): 326-48.

Marketing in the special library environment
Janet E. Powers
Library Trends 43(3): 478-93.

Marketing with a capital S: strategic planning for knowledge based services
Ulla de Stricker
Information Outlook February 1998

Practice as a marketing tool: four case studies
Duncan Smith
Library Trends 43(3): 450-62.

The search for new metaphors
Kathleen De La Pena
McCook Library Trends 46(1): 117-28.

Trends in marketing services
Linda M. Gorchels
Library Trends 43(3): 494-509.

Your attention please: marketing today's libraries
Beth Carpenter
Computers in Libraries 18(8): 62-66.

The End of the Road for a Corporate Library - Or Is It?
Doris Helfer
Searcher 6(1) January 1998: 14-16.
Comments on the closure of the Apple Library. Reports that the library was closed because management thought that operating costs could be reduced by forcing its business units to pay for information through their own budgets. Says Apple's management failed to account for the critical role of information and the waste of time and energy imposed by searches not conducted by information professionals. Adds that Apple employees will be forced to spend many unproductive hours trying to find needed materials that a library could have obtained quickly and efficiently. Remarks that the lack of critical information is certain to impact on the quality of Apple's products and the productivity of the entire company. - Information Today

Higher Ranked Fortune 500 Companies Significantly More Likely to Have Libraries
Information Outlook, 4(3) March 2000: 12-13.
An SLA study reveals that corporations with a higher ranking on the Fortune 500 list were significantly more likely than those ranked lower to have a corporate library or information center. When examining the Fortune 500 companies by groups of 100, it was found that 85% of those in the top 100 had libraries or information centers. Among companies ranked in the bottom 100, ranks 401 to 500, on the other hand, only 50% of the companies had libraries or information centers. -- SLA.COMmunicate

Fulfilling the Vision of the Virtual Library: The Cutting-Edge Web Library at Compaq Computer Corporation
T. Pack
ONLINE, September 2000
"It's the kind of thing that could kill a library. Your organization is acquired by another company. There's massive reorganization. Budgets are slashed. Upper management decide the doors to the information centers will be closed -- permanently. But when the library staff at Digital Equipment Corporation faced that situation, they not only survived, they thrived. Now known as WebLibrary at Compaq Computer Corporation in Littleton, Massachusetts, the library is a virtual service that excels in content integration, user-based system design, and the development of a high degree of synergy between library and IT functions."

Information Services and Downstream Productivity
Michael E.D. Koenig
Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Elsevier Science Publishing, 1990: 55-86.

Market the Value of Your Competitive Intelligence: An Added Role for the Information Center
Denise Chochrek
Information Outlook, 4(2) February 2000: 32-35.

The Value of the Special Library: Review and Analysis
Alison M. Keyes
Special Libraries, 86(3): 172-187, Summer 1995.
Keyes' excellent review of literature on determining the value of special libraries should be required reading for any corporate librarian about to embark on a project to value library services. She describes the various evaluation approaches clearly and concisely, and the annotated bibliography points the reader to many more useful works on the topic. Keyes categorizes quantifying methods in these categories: monetary value by time-saved methods, monetary value by productivity gains, and cost-benefit analysis. Keyes concludes that all cost data for operating corporate information centers that can be extracted, should be extracted as a first priority. Other priority activities include collecting user estimates of the value of library services, and recording positive instances of library services' impact. After all these activities have been accomplished, the library staff can determine cost-benefit ratios and how to present the results to management. - Information Access Company, Valuing Library Services

What is your Information Outlook?
Jane Dysart and Stephen Abram
Information Outlook, 1(1) January 1997: 34-36.
The word "outlook" can be viewed in many different ways. It is the perfect word to describe the challenges and opportunities facing special librarians and information professionals at the dawn of the information era. As special librarians move into this new age, they can be confident knowing they possess the core skills and talents necessary for this advanced global network and its cross cultural context. Four key skills that have positioned the librarian well for the future are: advanced technology skills, advanced service professionalism, advanced information literacy skills, and advanced people skills. Ultimately, the librarian's challenge is to use and expand on these skills in order to ensure that they are active participants in shaping the new age. -- SLA

Valuing special libraries and information services - summary and technical report of a project for the Special Libraries Association
Paul B. Kantor and Tefko Saracevic
Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association, 1999.
Kantor and Saracevic (TRB, 1997) developed a basis for documenting and measuring libraries' value to their supporting organizations. They argued that, although much is known about how top management views the special library, these managers rarely use the library directly and thus have an unclear understanding of its value. They focused on how actual users of the library value its services and how they express that value. For their interviews at 10 special libraries, Kantor and Saracevic developed a detailed taxonomy of value of information services, which not only considered fiscal savings, but also encompassed the new corporate concept of the balanced scorecard. Through interviews with 218 users of these libraries, they determined that individual users evaluate their library in terms of its ability to provide what they need to meet some corporate goal or objective. They concluded that "users of special libraries discuss value in terms of whether, and to what extent, the library or information service meets or does not meet their expectations of it" (p.37). Users will have already internalized corporate goals and shaped their own behavior to advance them. They then approach the library in furtherance of these goals and judge it on how well it meets these expectations. This information is important for anyone who seeks to express the value of the library to senior managers, whose focus is the bottom line. - U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Value of Information and Information Services

The Value of Corporate Libraries: Findings from a 1995 Survey of Senior Management
James Matarazzo and Laurence Prusak
Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association, 1995.
Matarazzo and Prusak interviewed the managers charged with overseeing libraries at more than 160 of America's largest corporations, including both business and scientific/technical libraries. The researchers inquired about library size, funding, staffing, user groups, mission, and services, as well as the managers' opinions concerning the relative value of library services and the future of the libraries they managed. Matarazzo highlighted some notable results. Fifty-five percent of the libraries surveyed in 1990 had five staff members or fewer. At that point, managers rated access to electronic databases as the most valuable library service, and access to journals as the second. Managers generally rated librarians highly, but 66% did not respond to a question about the value of library services to the company. Matarazzo blamed the managers' inability to pinpoint the contribution of corporate librarians on a lack of self-evaluation in those libraries. He noted that many of the libraries were founded decades ago, and existed only because they always had. He emphasized that librarians must make the impact of their services known to their managers. "This is the 90s," he said, asking, "Would you rather be liked? Or valued?" - FLICC Newsletter

Valuing Information Intangibles
F. Portugal
Special Libraries Association, 2000
A detailed examination of four methods for attaching a value to information activities: ROI and Cost Benefit Analysis; Knowledge Value Added; Intranet Team Forums; and Intellectual Capital Valuations, this handbook is useful in settings where rigorous calculations are appreciated. Chapter two, dealing with the Knowledge Value-Added method, is available for preview at www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0FEW/10_4/66276587/print.jhtml: "The basic idea is to find some surrogate measure for determining how much of an intangible asset - knowledge - is embedded in each subprocess that leads to a specific product or service."

Making the Case for Your Library: A How-To-Do-It Manual
S.G. Reed
Neal Schuman (2000) ISBN 1555703992
Reed, director of the Norfolk Public Library, VA, and coauthor of Speaking Out: Voices in Celebration of Intellectual Freedom (ALA, 1999), presents an excellent collection of handy tips and tricks librarians can use to assure success in promoting, defending, and assuring funding for their libraries. In a step-by-step discussion, she explains various public relations and marketing materials for creating, developing, and sharing the messages librarians want to get out to the public. These include fundraising techniques, negotiating with the media, writing editorials and op-ed columns, and preparing public service announcements and presentations. The text is replete with practical examples of the various public communication tools that have been used by other public libraries nationwide. Although geared primarily for use by library directors, staff, trustees, and Friends in public libraries, Reed's book outlines the basic principles of public relations that can be adapted in any situation. This is a nice supplement to Lisa Wolfe's Library Public Relations, Promotions, and Communications (Professional Media, LJ 9/1/97) as it focuses more on the politically sensitive aspects of these communication tools. Highly recommended for public libraries. - Library Journal

Communicating resource needs for successful library services
Carol Ann Hughes, Ilene Rockman, and Lizabeth A. Wilson
Bottom Line 13 (1) 2000: 10-15.
"Library professionals spend much of their budgeting time focused inward, allocating scarce resources among worthy competing priorities. Considerable time and skill is focused on the acquisition of the best print and electronic resources and in planning for computing infrastructure. And librarians are generous in sharing with others best practices for making budgetary decisions through articles in the library literature. However, less attention has been given in the literature on advice for those who wish to increase budgets for the services and programmatic offerings that are equally important for library clientele. This article attempts to address that gap. Summarizes the sage advice given in a presentation to a gathering of academic librarians during the June 1999 ALA to those who would better understand the budget process at research universities. Although the advice pertains primarily to budgeting practice in the USA, there are several nuggets of wisdom applicable in any situation."

Winning resources
Mike Heery
Bottom Line 12 (2) 1999: 57-67.
"An exploration of how librarians can win financial resources from their parent organisations. It maintains that securing funding is essential at a time of change and goes on to advocate practical techniques for improving the acquisition and management of financial resources. The paper examines the financial environment of many libraries, covering financial cuts, organisational changes, contracting out, service level agreements and income generation. The importance of the integration of libraries and information units within their parent bodies is considered. The paper stresses the importance of political skills in winning resources and explores what this means in practice for public, academic and special librarians. Finally, the paper looks at some aspects of austerity management."

Marketing: Making a Case for Your Library
Barbara Weiner
"One of the strongest marketing tools a library can use is the ability to put a dollar value on the resources and services a library provides to its organization. Value is added when library users are "changed" for having used library services and resources, allowing them to become more knowledgeable and empowered in decision making. Management and organizational culture need to realize this is the kind of value libraries can provide. A library may be under pressure to "prove" its value to the organization. Such value should be presented in dollar figures, so the library competes fairly with other divisions in the eyes of financial controllers and executive management. Extensive statistics of library use and activities do not reflect a dollar value of worth, the quality of service, or if library activities met organizational needs. A dollar value is difficult to assign to a piece of information shared - but not impossible!" [Quote taken from the segment entitled Finding a dollar value for library services and resources.]