Developing Library Marketing Strategies Based on Statistics and EvaluationThe University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign consists of over 40 departmental libraries with more than 10 million volumes, making it the largest public university library and the third largest among all university libraries in North America. As a departmental library within the University Library, the Business & Economics Library (BEL) primarily serves over 3,500 students and faculty at the College of Business for their research needs.Starting 2002, the BEL sought to reshape its image from a “house of books” to an electronic business information center. The author conducted extensive research to collect data on user experiences and expectations of library services and developed marketing strategies to promote the BEL’s services. The author sought to assess the effectiveness of information literacy and different patterns of information seeking behavior among business students. In 2003 and 2004, two surveys were taken to study how business students perceived library services in terms of electronic library services and library instruction. Based on the results, the author formulated marketing strategies to promote a new image of the BEL through partnership with other campus units and relationship marketing to faculty members. This study illustrates how data and statistics on library services can be applied to formulating and implementing marketing strategies. Methods of evaluating the impact of those strategies will also be discussed
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