For long-term success, the Information Center must be visible and must be considered vital to the organization. Marketing is part of a multi-pronged approach to insure those goals are met. In this unit of the InfoPro Resource Center, you will find the following tools to help you start a marketing initiative:

Professional Competency 1.7 of the SLA Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century states that the Special Librarian “uses appropriate business and management approaches to communicate the importance of information services to senior management.” Developing a marketing plan for the library is cited as a practical example of this competency.

A marketing plan is built on an understanding of the information needs of your clients and in accordance with the information center’s strategic plan. You can learn more about these two important functions in the first two units of the InfoPro Resource Center.

With increasing demands in the Information Center, which often functions with minimal staff support, it is easy to argue that there is no time for marketing. It is also easy to argue that if your marketing programs are successful, you will not be able to accommodate the increased business. An alternative way of looking at this situation is that increased demands for Information Center products and services can be used to make a business case for hiring additional staff to provide an even higher level of information services to the organization. Another possibility is to select from the increased demands those activities you choose to manage inhouse and outsource other tasks. Some tasks which were important at one time may no longer even be necessary and your resources can be redeployed elsewhere.

Let us know how your marketing efforts are succeeding or where you need assistance by writing to infopro@factiva.com.