I Wanna Market Libraries When I Grow Up

When I was an undergrad, like many students I teach now, I couldn’t put a name to what I wanted to “do with my life.” I liked customer service, art, writing, graphic design, and I also loved libraries and the freedom they embody, so I became an English Communications major.

Right out of college, I was lucky to get a job in a library and obtained my MLS while working there. Since then I have worked in public, community college and four-year college academic libraries. In these libraries, I have created, organized, designed, and contributed content to newsletters, flyers, blogs, websites, social media channels, etc. all while juggling other more important or pressing job responsibilities.

Last fall I attended the Library Marketing and Communications Conference. For the first time after many years of doing this work, I got to step back and consider how much these “other duties” impact libraries and how much this work meant to me.

Inspired by my students and this conference, I realized how marketing libraries is a culmination of my education and work experience. I came back almost feeling “called” to promote libraries and I had the drive to learn more about the subject. 

Therefore, my future blog posts will have a practical focus on social media marketing of small academic libraries. Again I am not an expert, but an interested practitioner who hopes by sharing my knowledge, success and failures we can all do better.

(Photo credit: Lebanon Valley College Archives, “Maureen E. Anderson,” Quittapahilla yearbook, Internet Archive, 2000, http://bit.ly/2GljLf2)