Marketing Libraries event

The CILIP Career Development Group North Eastern Division - whose committee I am member of - organised a training event on 5th September 2012 at Durham University Library entitled: 

Marketing Libraries

strategic and creative communications for information professionals

The event was coordinated by Rachel Smith from Durham University, who had asked me to come and help on the day. I was delighted as that meant I would get to hear all the presentations!

Rachel did a very nice Storify of the day, but here is a more detailed recollection to complement it.

For practical reasons, I chose a seat at the table by the door - so I could greet delegates as they came in and tick them off my list. Also at this table were Kerry, librarian at the Scottish National Gallery, Jackie from Northumbria University, Karina from Newcastle University Library and Becky from Newcastle Libraries. (Note the number of people working in Newcastle upon Tyne; this is important for later)

The morning session, "How do you like your eggs in the morning?", was delivered by Kay Grieves, Michelle Halpin and Heather Campbell from the University of Sunderland Library. It was based on Kay's 7 step toolkit for creating strategic marketing plans. Here are the 7 steps:

• Step 1: Establish where you want to go - your strategic direction and priorities
• Step 2: Identify your overall service offers
• Step 3: Identify, segment and describe your customers
• Step 4: Define a targeted service offer for each customer segment (to meet their identified needs)
• Step 5: Transform your service offer into benefits for each customer segment
• Step 6: Translate these benefits into targeted messages or conversations for each segment
• Step 7: Communicate your key messages through customer conversations

It was a very practical session, interspersed with hands-on activities. First, we were asked to segment our customers - my table segmented customers of a public library. It was complicated as these can be divided into so many categories, that intersect themselves! Age is an obvious one, but also employment/education status or personal life (whether they have a family, live on their own, etc.) For the second activity we looked more closely at one of these segments - we chose students, as they can also be found in museum and university libraries, focusing on non-UK students and why they come to a public library, what they need from it and what challenges they may face. This is when Becky and I realised Karina and her colleagues were sending us customers! Apparently, foreign students often ask for audiobooks to help them improve their English language skills, which the university library doesn't stock - but the public library does. From this came the idea of offering to these students, and to any person arriving to the city from outside of the North-East of England, a "learn Geordie" audiobook to help them adapt to the local dialect! We got very excited by this idea and used it in the next activity when defining a range of service offers for our segment and articulating the benefits of each service to our recently-adopted Newcastle residents. Lastly, we started thinking about a campaign to promote our "borrow an audiobook to learn Geordie" service to our customer segment.

Unfortunately, neither the universities nor Newcastle Libraries would have the resources to actually create this audiobook, but contacts were made to maybe set up a joint university/public libraries social media campaign which would contribute to enhance international students' experience in Newcastle and could involve a "Geordie Word of the Week" on Twitter. I can't wait to see this happen!

During the lunch break we had a quick tour of Durham University's main library and its new East Wing. (picture below)

In the first session of the afternoon, Luke Burton talked to us about social media marketing for libraries. No offence to Luke, but that's the topic I was already most comfortable with, so I am not going to write about it here.

Next was Helen Thornber, who used to work at Durham University Library but is now part of the private company Mariposa Development. Helen made us focus on branding: what does it entail? It is linked to an organisation's image, its shared values - we had to think, with the help of a list of examples, about which brand values are used by our organisations. These values, which represent the organisation, are translated into its visual identity: logo, strapline, but also colours, visual style...

Helen gave us some tips on creativity but also warned us to be aware of what our organisations' branding guidelines are!

Antonio Jimenez-Milian closed the day with his session on marketing for small and specialist libraries, where he used his experience from his days at York Minster Library - and a lot of humour when comparing the library to famous big brands.

Historic libraries are important because they represent knowledge, going from one generation to the other. But how do they communicate this? How do they get the visitor to become a member, to become involved in their preservation and development? Antonio guided us through the journey from the physical visit to the library ("Don't let your visitors leave without any written information! Otherwise they'll easily forget about you"), to the visit to the website, then the library's Facebook page ("Out of four posts, three should be not about your library but about things you want to be associated with. Talk about local things, things your visitors might be interested in"), the subscription to the newsletter and finally (the nirvana): Membership! You have to make being a member attractive to your visitors; you need to give them more than the right to borrow. For big commercial brands' customers that means gifts, exclusivities and discounts; for the library members it can be an invitation to exclusive behind-the-scenes tours or to see a new exhibition before it opens to the general public, and include incentives such as: "renew your membership and get a dedicated bookplate in one of the Library's books"!

Bookplate from CDG NE's Summer visit to York Minster Library - we do feel special!!!

It was a very enjoyable day, and I feel a lot more confident about marketing plans - it is something I had learned about at university but the refresher felt welcome, and the workshop activities made me realise I could actually do it, if needed. I also feel I understand branding better and gained some good tips on using social media on behalf of a library. Finally, being able to hear and see what others in the profession were doing (the stunning marketing campaigns of the University of Sunderland Library or Antonio's tips on making members feel special), talking with people working in different sectors such as academic or museum libraries, generally stealing each other's ideas sharing best practice, making plans to collaborate - all this was fantastic!

ABF 2012, part 4/4: digital resources survey

From 7th to 9th June 2012, the ABF (Association des Bibliothécaires de France - the French library association) held its 58th annual congress in Montreuil, near Paris. And I was there! I had been invited by a friend on the ABF regional branch committee for the wider-Paris area to help out during the three days. This gave me the opportunity to attend several sessions, most of them directly linked to the conference theme: 

The library, a public matter

The last session I would like to share with you is a presentation by the company Vodeclic of their first ever annual digital resources survey.

Vodeclic is an e-learning firm, selling IT tutorials to different kind of organisations, from businesses to libraries. It has recently undertaken a survey of digital resources in French libraries, the results of which were published in February 2012. The survey was sent to the 1000 biggest public library services in France and got 235 responses. Note to non-French readers: in France, public libraries are under the authority of the town, an administrative entity that can be much smaller and therefore with less financial resources than the British counties and cities.

I thought it would be interesting to compare the results with a UK library I am familiar with; for this purpose, I was kindly allowed to use figures from Newcastle Libraries.

28% of the libraries responding to the survey declared they did not have any digital resources available to customers. However, half of these were planning on launching a digital offer in 2012.

Of the remaining library services, 75% declared having at least 3 digital resources - meaning, for the most part, online databases - and 58% had at least 5. Unfortunately, more detailed data was not available; the Vodeclic speakers did admit they needed to refine this part of the survey for next year's. In comparison, Newcastle Libraries offer at least 20 resources!

Most of the libraries surveyed had launched their digital offer more than two years ago, which is also the case for Newcastle. Unlike in Newcastle, however, 62% of French libraries said they did not reduce their budget for paper resources when moving to digital resources.

32% of libraries have a budget of less than 5,000€ (about £4,000) for digital resources and 52% of less than 10,000€. Only some of the bigger cities (22% of the respondents) have a budget reaching over 20,000€ (about £16,000); Newcastle is also in this group, with a budget about £70,000.

The most popular types of digital resources offered by French libraries are, in descending order: self-directed learning, press, encyclopedias. In Newcastle Libraries, resources are mainly encyclopedias and dictionaries or related to business and law.

In more than half of the French libraries resources are only available on-site, whereas Newcastle Libraries customers have access to 15 online resources anywhere at any time, via the 24 Hour Library.

Vodeclic also asked the libraries how the resources were promoted: 80% used their website as well as leaflets and posters. Only 40% declared that library staff had received training, and 20% had workshops for customers.

In Newcastle, the resources are also promoted using both paper materials and the library's website. There is training available for staff on some of the resources (classes, presentation of the resource in internal newsletter) and regular classes or one-to-one sessions for customers on family history and business resources.

In France, over 75% of libraries esteem that less than 10% of their customers use their online resources. This is similar to Newcastle, where the number of visits to digital resources and active borrower figures for the month of February 2012 show a usage of 9%.

The feedback received by the French libraries seemed satisfying, though 25% of them admitted not knowing what their customers thought. I had access to feedback collected by Newcastle Libraries from customers attending business resources workshops - most comments mentioned these being "interesting" and "useful". For other types of digital resources, unfortunately, the library tends to hear about them only when there is a problem.

In the conclusion to the results of their survey, Vodeclic pointed out two main issues: budget and training. Libraries and local authorities consider digital resources are too expensive for them to acquire and offer for use in a way that is convenient to users (i.e. with a sufficient number of simultaneous connections and off-site access). More training should be provided in order to increase awareness and usage of the resources: training for staff so that they can promote the resources and training for customers to help them get started.

In comparison to the French libraries surveyed, Newcastle Libraries seem to be doing very well! Though again, it should be mentioned there is a difference in size and therefore budget between library authorities in France and in the UK. It would be interesting to get more comments from Newcastle Libraries customers on several types of digital resources: which ones they use and what they think of them, which ones they don't use and why, which ones they would like the library to offer. More ways of raising awareness - and eventually, usage - of the resources could be developed: perhaps by offering more workshops on different subjects or being able to work more closely with schools regarding information literacy classes; all of which are I believe already being looked into.

ABF 2012, part 3/4: examples from abroad

From 7th to 9th June 2012, the ABF (Association des Bibliothécaires de France - the French library association) held its 58th annual congress in Montreuil, near Paris. And I was there! I had been invited by a friend on the ABF regional branch committee for the wider-Paris area to help out during the three days. This gave me the opportunity to attend several sessions, most of them directly linked to the conference theme: 

The library, a public matter

The Friday afternoon session was entitled: "Do we still need libraries? Examples from abroad". It echoed the morning one - which unfortunately I could not attend - on the difficulties encountered by French libraries, with an overview of the situation for library services in Belgium, the UK, Lebanon and the Middle-East as well as Quebec.

Chantal Stanescu, deputy head of the Brussels Area library service, explained the new policy set up by the Belgian minister for libraries. This policy is inscribed in a law which, despite referring to libraries as "local operators", has the particularity of guaranteeing funding, not for the library services, but to pay for library staff. This law states that libraries contribute to the development of the citizens by offering access to knowledge and education and that by doing so they also facilitate participation in the democracy.

In Belgium, library services devote themselves to helping people in practical aspects of their lives. Users often come to the library accompanied by partners such as after-school associations or employment agencies, on a regular basis. Therefore, these customers keep coming back...

Tony Durcan, head of Culture, Libraries and Lifelong Learning at Newcastle City Council, talked about the UK political agenda and used examples from Newcastle Libraries to demonstrate how libraries still had "real value, and real potential" in this current environment.

You can watch his presentation here; it starts at about 9 minutes 30 after the beginning of the video. Tony's presentation is in English, interspersed with the translation in French by Annick Guinery, session moderator, and myself (!)

Tony Durcan, head of Culture, Libraries and Lifelong Learning at Newcastle City Council; and myself, unofficial translator

 

Next was Maud Stephan-Hachem's presentation: "Will there be a season for Arabic libraries?"

She emphasized the fact that reading was not very developed in Arabic countries. There are only about 20,000 to 30,000 titles published every year in the 22 Arabic-speaking countries, for a population of 300 million people. As much as 30% of the population is illiterate, and access to reading materials is reduced by issues of distribution (censorship, tariff barriers) and price of books. Reading is mainly either of religious texts or of academic content, related to study.

The existing public libraries are often old libraries focused on preserving heritage collections, though in Lebanon the success of new libraries meant as lively event venues is gaining momentum.

In contrast, French-Canadian libraries seem to be doing especially well! Suzanne Payette, from the city of Brossard in Quebec, gave an inspiring talk, telling us what she thinks library services should be doing. Here's a summary of the points she mentioned:

• Key roles of libraries = literacy, education, culture, information;
• The librarian is a mediator: we are there to help customers make information theirs, not just to store it. Library staff should get out from behind the desk: they should be mobile, IT-literate and interact with people;
• 24/7 access: in Quebec, Sundays are the busiest day, therefore libraries should be open. Self-service helps supplement opening hours, and digital resources make some services available 24 hours a day;
• Attractive buildings;
• Choose the books and collections according to the users;
• Have a social media presence, develop communication with any organisation that can have a link to the library service and push the information towards people. For example: have an agreement with a theatre - any individual buying a theatre ticket, and having authorized the use of their email address, will receive an email informing them of library resources relating to this particular play;
• Work as a network, in a consortium and/or with any kind of organisation that can enrich practical knowledge of the local environment.

ABF 2012, part 2/4: public participation

From 7th to 9th June 2012, the ABF (Association des Bibliothécaires de France - the French library association) held its 58th annual congress in Montreuil, near Paris. And I was there! I had been invited by a friend on the ABF regional branch committee for the wider-Paris area to help out during the three days. This gave me the opportunity to attend several sessions, most of them directly linked to the conference theme: 

The library, a public matter

The last session of the first day and the first workshop of the second day both focused on how to engage with the public in implementing policies and defining services, with numerous examples.

Dominique Tabah opened the second Thursday afternoon session by talking about her experience at Montreuil libraries. She explained that requests from the public must be collected, identified and analysed with attention, be they from library users or non-users. Those requests can be difficult to satisfy but always deserve an answer on what the library service can and can't do.

How do we collect these customer opinions? Dominique Tabah gave several examples of the work Montreuil does with teenagers. Montreuil libraries have a teenage reading committee that meets once a month to select new books for the teenage collection. This is useful to understand what these readers think and expect of the collection. Occasionally, the young people involved also defend their choices in a public debate in front of other customers. Montreuil also asks of middle school pupils doing their work placement in the libraries to survey their classmates on their perception of the service. On top of this, the work placement pupils are also expected to give to their class a tour of the library.

Next, Anita Beldiman-Moore, from Sciences-Po Paris, talked about collecting data on the use of the service and the opinion of customers in a university library.

Sciences-Po have had "test weeks" when staff record the number of enquiries they get by topic as well as depending on the time and the location. This system showed when were the busiest times for each location, and whether the questions asked actually matched the purpose of the designated enquiry desks. For feedback on the quality of the service, Sciences-Po Library uses focus groups and home-made online surveys. It has also started taking part in the international LibQUAL+ survey, which measures the gap between the minimal and maximal level of service customers hope for with the level they are observing.

Xavier Galaup, from the Haut-Rhin regional library service, focused on the importance for libraries to co-create services and contents with their users. Among the examples he mentioned were Helsinki's Library 10 and its music recording studio, more and more libraries putting historical pictures on Flickr for customers to identify or share related stories, a series of "Our customers have got talent" evenings in a town library in Northern France, Brest's local history wiki, a Belgian library streaming website with music from local bands (whom listeners can vote for), ... and many others. You can view his presentation below - in French, but, erm, with pictures!

Co-création des services et des contenus avec les usagers

The Friday morning workshop offered the opportunity for delegates to share thoughts and practice on whether and how to involve customers in some traditionally "librarian-only" tasks. I am going to set out the questions and some of the comments voiced, and then leave you to think about your own answers, and maybe to share and discuss them! Here are the topics:

• Weeding: what legitimacy has the librarian to act on a public collection? This can be a problem especially in university libraries. Solutions discussed included informing users before the items are discarded, for example by marking items beforehand so that researchers using them can indicate their disagreement, or making lecturers take part in the weeding process.
• Delegation of acquisitions: who has the right to decide what to buy for the library collection, and to what extent? This conversation actually ranged from the pressure of public policies/the local authority to the system of packages imposed by some providers of digital resources (only a few resources the library is interested in, but no choice to get them other than pay for the lot). I was surprised no one mentioned supplier selection (I almost did) - maybe it doesn't exist in France?
• Is classification the last bastion of the librarians, where they are the only ones to decide and they can do whatever they want?
• The customer as a source of knowledge: should there be a public policy on human knowledge to implement? Example: a living library where actual people are added to the library's catalogue.