In talks I've had and articles I've read recently, I've noticed an odd characteristic in librarians. They seem to have developed an embarrassment, almost a shame, about using marketing strategies to promote their services. For example, Jessamyn West posted on her blog Librarian.net an entry titled "I believe there are times when self-promotion is helpful". Why the timidity? I believe the time when self-promotion is helpful is ALL the time. I'm not paid by the people of Kankakee to be humble. I'm paid to talk about how great our library is to everyone, everywhere, in every media. Some have called the "Library 2.0" catch phrase empty and useless. Maybe it is empty and useless, like "fly the friendly skies", "have it your way" or "just do it". But these empty phrases sold millions of airline tickets, hamburgers and sneakers respectively. We librarians like to associate ourselves with the academia that places itself above the unclean world of advertising. However, college professors are not competing with MTV, PS3 and YouTube for the attention of their audience. As Michael Porter pointed out in BiblioTech episode #2 (self-promotion intended) a catchphrase is simply shiny wrapping paper, without exciting content you have nothing. He's right. However, I think he'd agree, if you have great content and don't push it out to the public using smart publicity strategies, your services will go the way of beta video recorders, a great product that got its brains bashed in by the brasher competition.

Stephen Bertrand
Assistant Director