Greg’s been thinking and reading about online identity, reputation management and personal branding. His interest is NOT in marketing libraries. He says there are plenty of other people worrying about that. He’s talking about marketing librarians and hopes to find ways to demonstrate the importance of that distinction to others in our profession.
I suspect few of you would disagree that librarians are, for the most part, poor self-promoters and marketers. I plan on doing my part to change that and the first step is paying attention to the people who know what they’re talking about.
Marketing Librarians
I think the first step is to raise the self-esteem of librarians. Too many think that they are not important or that their job can now be done by anyone (Google searching) or by recent college graduates who will be so enthusiastic and customer service oriented, their lack of expereince will not matter. If librarians do not place a high value on their knowledge and expertise, the public will not.
yes, let’s market librarians!
Cool, I just read Greg’s blog post this morning. I think he’s right on the money. Most librarians emphasize marketing the library, which is good… but marketing ourselves as librarians is also something we need to do too!
-Talking Books Librarian
http://talkingbookslibrarian.blogspot.com/
Marketing Librarians
In my view … and I’ve been a public library director for 20+ years … you can’t market the library without also marketing the PEOPLE who provide the services.
Books don’t fly off the shelves on their own, you know.
Users want to interact with people who have expertise and honest-to-god personalities. THAT is the public library advantage.