future addition to my bio: book author

me, with contract

what's that in your hand? what, where? that there, in your hand. it looks like a book contract. is it a book contract? why yes, it IS a book contract.

i met my co-author, cheryl laguardia, at the recent library assessment conference, in attendance at the presentation in which i depressed the whole room with my analysis (the short story: libraries don’t do a good job assessing their marketing techniques for electronic resources). we chatted via email and soon decided that a book on this topic, a practical approach to developing a marketing plan for a library’s electronic resources, was just the thing the profession needed. neal-schuman publishers, inc. agreed, so we’re on our way. the tentative title of the book is: marketing your library’s electronic resources: a how-to-do-it manual.

i’m pretty excited to be working with cheryl. she’s kind of fabulous. this book project also gave me a reason to start a hanging folder. i chose yellow for this project because it is the happiest of colors.

happy yellow hanging folder

Posted in e-resource mgmt, library, marketing, writing | 3 Comments

a small gift from my father

post-it notes

it’s like he knows me.

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print-to-electronic journal conversion project is nearing completion

like most libraries, we have been moving to the electronic format for journal content, rather than retaining subscriptions in print. our library now has a policy for preferring the electronic format, with exceptions. we used duke libraries’ and cornell university library’s policies (http://library.duke.edu/about/collections/eonly.html; cornell’s no longer available) to guide our own.

over the last four years, in collaboration with our faculty, we have been canceling print journal subscriptions if our access to the electronic content is owned in perpetuity. this is the last year of our formal project to convert these subscriptions, and it has a very satisfying ending. as 2011 closes we will have converted 770 journals from print to electronic format, with no loss of content, just a simple format conversion. we have seen a modest cost savings as a result of this project, but it is not as dramatic a result as the knowledge that we are providing journal content to our users in a format that they prefer, with good stewardship to the preservation of the journal content for our collection.

here’s a simple chart i used in a report upon the conclusion of our project.

has your library gone through a similar conversion? if so, would you be willing to share your story? how many journals has your library converted to the e-format? did you accomplish this in an intentional project format, or as a matter of course? were your faculty involved in the decision making?

Posted in e-resource mgmt, library | 2 Comments

When there’s nothing to guide you

When there's nothing to guide you -- comic strip

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LOOK AT THIS FIGURE. look at it.

just got the article reprints for my latest article (http://orgmonkey.net/?p=1234) and as i was flipping through i fell in love all over again with the figures i made to illustrate the frequencies of specific marketing techniques used in libraries. i don’t know why i find the little images of the librarian on the left and the patron on right so amusing, but there ya’ go.

here’s one of the figures from the article, figure 4: training. these are all the marketing techniques that fell into the category of “training.” the most mentioned marketing technique in this category is patron training in a group setting, mentioned 15 times.

figure 4. Training

Marie R. Kennedy. 2011. “What Are We Really Doing to Market Electronic Resources?” Library Management 32(3): 144-158. DOI: 10.1108/01435121111112862

 

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Collaborative Marketing for Electronic Resources

At the recent conference of the Association of College & Research Libraries (Philadelphia, PA) I used my poster presentation to propose a national, collaborative project with college and university libraries all over the United States to test a model for benchmarking marketing for electronic resources.

100 different college/university libraries will participate in the project, during which we’ll all work through the steps in a marketing cycle together, all perform the same marketing technique, and then report our assessments to the group. The goal of the project is to test a collaborative model for marketing electronic resources. We’ll organize ourselves and communicate via a wiki at http://benchmarketing.wetpaint.com. See THIS PAGE for the extended timeline for the project. We’ll begin the project on October 3, 2011.

There are quite a few universities signed up, but there is room for more of you to join the fun. If you’re interested, send me an email and I’ll add you to the list of participants. It is free to participate. No travel required.

Consider participating if:

  • you are a librarian in a college or university setting
  • you have permission to market electronic resources
  • you have access to usage statistics for electronic resources
  • you are willing to share what you learn in this project

wiki logo

Here is a link to the poster I used at ACRL and the handout that has more information about the project: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/librarian_pubs/2/. If you prefer viewing in SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/orgmonkey/collaborative-marketing-for-electronic-resources. Email me if you’ve got questions.

Posted in e-resource mgmt, library, marketing | 1 Comment