Dear Colleagues
I was really interested to see Christine's post about promoting an EDC.
Partly, as an ex-EDC person, but also because we talked about just this
topic at the SE Regional Relays Annual Conf. here in Reading earlier this
month. I must heap praise on the Univ. Reading EDC as they've been very
helpful to us here at the Public Library - Christine is popping to see us
soon, and has kindly agreed to self-promote at a seminar I've got to sort
out for Thames Valley EPICs in the New Year. (Thanks Christine!)
The discussion group I was part of looked at basic strategies for promotion,
and some obstacles, and the report of the discussion should be in the main
conference report. We didn't address the issues of "competition" from the
internet specifically, but it's a live one in public libraries I know. The
main ideas were
Plan carefully and analyse your market
Network like crazy
Piggy back on other campaigns
Look hard at your service - staff training and point of sale
I think our experience may differ from our esteemed EDC colleagues - yes the
net is making a diffrence to our enquiry patterns, but in terms of EU work,
I don't thibk its actually decreasing them - we get about 1500 enquiries per
week max here, with c.2% EU. My feeling is that our customers don't use
the net effectively, and in any case don't always find what they need -
stats and project support material. We also promote internet access here so
we are in a sense a provider as much as a competitor
AT present my thinking is that for us the Net is an agent of change, but
that the nature of that change is not yet clear.
This may not be something for Eurotalk, but would "Internet: Theat or ally"
be a useful topic for a regional Relays conference or a single Realay
meeting? Maybe its smething the EIA could be used to give an overview on
(yes Catherine, I know I've got to renew!) as its members come from all
sectors.
By the way - we piggy back on general library publicity and my policy is
increasingly not to promote Eu info, rather to try to pronote the idea of
"open government info" at local, national and EU level. I have my doubts
about the independen existence of an EU collection for a lot of public
libraries.....(see a forthcoming pice for European Information)
Anyhow, if you'd like our little EU bookmark, please do let me know and I
can send you a sample or two - it's very cheap @ £70 odd per 1000 and gets
used as a glorified business card and comps slip. It also gives Europa,
Commission London and Euroguide web addresses - all links we offer from our
website (http://www.readinglibraries.org.uk)
Mike Cooper
Reading Library, UK
(A level 2-something EPIC and proud of it)
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|