Thanks to all who responded to my earlier posting! The feedback was very
useful and we will certainly be taking it all into consideration for our
promotional work here!
Below is some of the feedback from various libraries. Any other comments
are still welcome!!
Thanks again!
Katrina Brodin
Glasgow City Council
Libraries, Information and Learning
(1) we are looking to promote in the coming year as part of our Service
Plan objectives. These include KnowUK, xrefer, Proquest , Kompass, FAME &
RM Living Library. So far, actions have been to arrange training sessions
for the staff on e.g.: KNowUK and apply for their free publicity material.
We are also planning a programme of staff training across all libraries
that will highlight electronic as well as more traditional reference
sources. We also plan to increase the links to subscription databases on
our website to increase usage; at present we only have a link to xrefer on
the website, although we have an extensive menu of Reference & Information
links.
Another way we have tried to promote usage on the People's Network PCs is
to create web menu pages on our 'Reference only' PCs , which link direct to
the services.
(2) Our promotion of our resources is not great - we hope to improve it
through a variety of means including developing our webpages, promotional
material, hands on sessions for the public, more staff training. We also
want to manage all our e-resources with the iris software we have
purchased, which would put them all on a user interface available in all
our libraries.
We've decided to focus on one area, create a web page with all our
resources in that area e.g business information, and then promote. The
usual story - its all about finding the time.
(3)I think one crucial element is staff training and awareness. We have
held a series of E-Resources training sessions with front line staff where
one of the areas covered was subscription web sites. Staff were able to get
hands on access to the sites with support materials that they could take
away with them. Staff can only use and promote materials if they aware of
them and know how to use them - it was amazing how many of our staff had no
knowledge of the resources. We intend to restart our sessions in the autumn
(4)I have been doing some promotional work of the London Libraries
www.londonlibraries.org.uk website rather than particular resources in
libraries but you may find some of the ideas transferable?
BBC London made a link to the site from their web page for Word for Word, a
weekly literature broadcast.
I also had some links from:
London university library websites;
VisitLondon, the tourist web page;
Association for London Government, to raise awareness with elected members;
Open University
so if your web resources are accessible from a single page you could
identify some likely websites to ask them to link.
What I'd like to do in the longer term is segment library resources by
subject and use this as a marketing tool with local groups and businesses
to promote the library service.
(5)The Aberdeenshire Libraries presentation is avilable on the SLIC web
site at
http://www.slainte.org.uk/Peopnetw/Peopnetwpubs/seminars/04062100.htm
Information about the training days that we held last year and copies of
materials we used are also on the site at
http://www.slainte.org.uk/news/Archive/0402/0402.htm
We also aimed some in house materials at branch staff (of which we have
used most for the public) to get them to think about online resources -
posters, remote access flyers and for KnowUK a handout in the format of a
bookshelf with the KnowUk publications listed on it as we found at the
training days that their conception of KnowUk was to treat it as if it were
a search engine (and not a reference library - they compared it to Google)
Quite a few said that they would go to the reference shelves to get a book
even though a more up-to-date edition was available in KnowUk.
I notice that you are looking to promote Whichbook. We added a signature
(below) to the default reply email sent in reply to an online pin number
request to directly highlight the service to online users. Not sure of the
success as it's the responsibility of the Media Team.
â?olooking to relax on the edge of your seat?"
www.whichbook.net a new way of choosing what to read
(6)I think promotion begins with staff if they are comfortable using the
products they are more likely to pass it on to other staff and to the
public. They probably need to be made aware of each subscription's
benefits, we try to incorporate this in training sessions
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