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Marketing Of Library Services In Academic Libraries
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The success of the library depends on the
quality of services and products rendered to users Bushing (1995)
supported this statement when she stated that the success of the library
depends on the quality and excellence of its products. She continues
that products include all the resources and services available in the
library. The price is the cost of producing the product. The time it
takes a user to obtain a product is referred to as price. Libraries are
not profit making organization. Libraries users pay indirectly for the
services they use. They pay through their school fees, taxes, grants and
donations. These are enough reasons to satisfy the information needs of
users. Typically, the development of information communication
technology has proven that the place is very important factor in a
library setting. The internet makes it possible for any library to offer
services to users at any part of the world and at any time of the day.
Every academic library must make provision for internet connectivity in
their libraries. The library environment and staff must be user
friendly. Promotion simply means informing users about the benefits they
will derive in using library resources and services. The five elements
of promotion includes: Advertising, public relation, incentive and
environment.
Nolan (1998) advised librarians to become entrepreneurs.
Librarians must not wait for people who have no idea on how libraries
are managed and who do not care about their work to change their
situation for them. She advises that libraries must run like commercial
firms and professional librarians must be managers. However, in other to
achieve these librarians and information professionals need to be very
competent in marketing of library services. This is because, in every
work of life competency is the key that is used to face the
developmental challenges in the corporate world. (Chandra, 2011). The
success of a library largely depends on the level of competence that
exists among the librarians in the library. Mailese, (1995) quoted
Amaral and stated that many librarians lack professional understanding
of the marketing concept and its applicability to their field. This
could be as a result of lack of adequate training and education on
marketing to librarians in library schools. It is now very necessary for
marketing to be introduced in library school’s curriculum. Also
frequent seminars, trainings and workshops on marketing and information
and communication technology should be organized for librarians.
Marketing
of library and information services have not being given much attention
in most academic libraries because of funding. The problem of poor
funding is compounded by the fact that academic library administration
does not always have a timely and consistent budget for management of
library not to talk of allocating a budget for marketing of library
services. There is also unreliable and inadequate access to internet.
Also, most library management do not really understand the concept of
marketing they view marketing as just applicable to profit organization
and not applicable to libraries. In view of these challenges academic
libraries need to apply some techniques in marketing library services.
Such techniques include: creating a library web page, sending e-mails to
users, exhibitions and display of new arrivals, use of leaflets and
posters, organizing user education, provision of electronic access to
information and organizing library week. Also funds should be allocated
for marketing of library services.
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