Look what we’ve got for you!

Promoting library collections

Abstract

Librarians put a lot of time and thought into the question "what to buy for the library?" to meet users’ needs as best as possible. But what happens once a book or a database or a journal has made it onto the (virtual) shelf? How do users learn about new acquisitions or other interesting holdings? In this article, we take a tour through collection-marketing activities by academic libraries, highlighting some interesting examples and collecting ideas for reuse.

Method: We scouted the internet presence of all IATUL member libraries, considering their websites and, if available, their web 2.0 / social media activities. We added findings from literature and from chance encounters.

Results: Our data collection provides an overview of collection-marketing activities in academic libraries all over the world. We discuss the different types of activities, present some examples that we consider interesting, and share insights into recent activities at one of the authors’ libraries.

Limitations: We can only analyse the activities of those libraries that use a working language we understand, which rules out some libraries that don’t have, e.g., a version of their website in English, German, French, or a Scandinavian language. Moreover, we only consider the perspective and activities of the libraries – but not the perspective and expectations of their users. Investigating whether they have informational needs about collections that are not yet met by libraries would be an interesting complement to our study.