Looking At The Library Blog Statistics: users choose value-rich content

For almost three years, the college library has been using a blog (http://nwhclibrary.wordpress.com/) for marketing and user education. It’s been one of the most exciting and defining developments in the library’s recent practice.


I have learnt a lot since then, also by making mistakes. We have experimented with using the blog as a social platform for soliciting views and interaction with the users. We have tried to teach them how to follow blogs, and this blog in particular, using RSS feeds… to a very little effect. One of the important lessons I learnt was that the library users (and learners in general) will not flock to the specially designed for them virtual spaces. They may stumble upon the library where they are already spend their time, e.g. Facebook and Twitter, but any form of an active engagement on their part there is very unlikely – a college library simply can’t compete with our users’ own interests, hobbies and concerns. They may, however, look for the library when they need a quick fix of the forthcoming assignment or the OpenAthens access details – either for e-books or shopping discounts.


Top pages and posts for the first three months of 2013



Annual Report for Marketing Library Service*

From several colleagues of mine in the FE sector I have heard that they produced annual library reports addressed to their line managers, but they rarely heard feedback or observed any change following those reports. The documents were likely to be lost in among other papers or forgotten in the emails inboxes.

Few years ago my college colleagues and I spend some time thinking on effective marketing for the college library. One of the bottlenecks identified was the lack of meaningful communication with the college managers and key stakeholders. The library has much to showcase and the college – to be proud of that, but the venues for speaking about our contribution to the college successes are extremely limited within the institution almost solely focused on measuring learners’ progression.

As any other college service or team, the library produces its annual self-assessment report which is then incorporated into the departmental/directorial SAR; at that stage it is probably archived. The college librarian’s line manager is the one who sees the document and, hopefully, makes some conclusions out of it; then its content is virtually lost for the college.

Plasma Screen for Marketing

One of the most interesting ongoing projects I have been involved, was developing a marketing strategy for the college library which would embrace a variety of media available to us. A year ago I blogged on that experience and then contributed to a JISC webinar on the same topic.

Our approach is open-ended: it should be able to embrace new solutions that become available to the library. The idea is to re-use the content the library generates in a variety of ways. Here is another example of that.

Last year the library got its hands on old(ish) plasma screen and PC; the screen is now mounted on the wall next to two MFDs (multi-functional devices: printer, scanner and photocopier in one piece). These MFDs are the most used in the whole college, mostly by learners: small queues are a normal picture there, so the location for the plasma screen is perfect.

The screen is used for publicising library services and resources, as well as tips and advice. Recently, other college services have started approaching the library for publicity opportunities.

We use PowerPoint to create simple slides which then are displayed as PowerPoint show on the loop. Most of the content comes from what's already been published on the library blog, - the main repository of the content generated by the library. Roughly once a week the slides are refreshed, new content is added, something removed.

Here is an example of the file used on the screen (PDF).

Traditional and emerging media for marketing library

Added on 13.03.2012: I have slightly amended/shortened the notes to the slides on SlideShare and here is my first ever slidecast (Screenr is very easy to use, but I wish it had as much functionality as the MS Power Point's voice-over presentation tool) - http://www.screenr.com/user/iharivanou. And more fun, this time with Hello Slide, an automatic voice-over online generator - http://www.helloslide.com/presentations/1891/marketing-library-ihar-ivanou-12-march-2012 Surreal!

My presentation (which did not take place due to technical problems) for a JISC's webinar on use of technology for promoting library services, 5 March 2012.  Notes to the the slides are available at http://www.slideshare.net/nieszczarda/marketing-fe-library.

Marketing FE Library

View more PowerPoint from nieszczarda

Library for marketing the college

Recently, I spoke to a colleague who, with her daughter, went to see all the schools and colleges offering A-Levels in the neighbourhood. Working in a library, she paid attention to what information/academic skills support learners get there – in addition to classroom activities. She was shocked that only our college and another one next door had a proper library service and all that comes with that – learning resources, support and guidance.
This made me to think that FE colleges should exploit libraries marketing and recruitment. Universities are critical about the quality of academic skills that schools offer, they invest a lot into remedial support in the first year. Our college is unique for Nuneaton in that sense: we offer full scale library, information and academic skills training and support. All that is done by staff experienced in working with HE students; no one else in our town could offer that. On top of everything, we are the only learning provider in Nuneaton actively and purposefully developing an e-book collection – it’s bigger than all public libraries of the county have on offer right now. This may be especially attractive to prospective A Level and Access students as when they go to university, they will have to start using library's digital content straight away.

From what I know, no schools and colleges in Nuneaton use their libraries in their marketing. Shame.

On marketing the library service

Two years ago my colleague at that time, Peter Barr, and I started a project: to develop marketing of the college library in the way which would embrace both traditional and emerging media; all should have connected and worked together. Before that, the library produced a lot of helpsheets, guides and leaflets; it also had a well developed presence on Moodle and the college website. It was first in the college to set up a Facebook page even though Facebook was banned on the college network PCs. However, our marketing activities were disjoint: content for each media was prepared separately, often – occasionally and by different people.

My thinking was broadly prompted by the Guardian which was the first major newspaper in Britain to move away from publishing online the texts that as the rule had already appeared in the paper edition. Very early the Guardian adopted a multi-platform approach: as soon as the content is ready it is pushed to all available media, edited and re-packaged respectively.