The Special Libraries Group: Six months for Karen

1. The Special Libraries Group: Six months for Karen Caleb May Eura Ryan Daphne Tseng Li855: Collection Development Emporia State University

2. The Case: Karen Nichols is a new selector in a large academic library. Her collection responsibilities encompass sociology, social work, family social science, and rural sociology. Karen’s background: Karen has an M.L.S. and a second master’s in family social science. She has eleven years’ experience as a subject specialist in the social sciences in two previous positions. Karen’s problem: Karen’s predecessor, who was a has left her with a great deal of information about the collection and her budget, but no information about her stakeholders and the users of the collection.

3. Karen’s six month plan of action: • Learn about her public • Segment her market • Gather secondary and primary data • Develop avenues for communication • Create a Marketing Plan • Promote her collections • Evaluate her performance

4. What Karen has to offer her constituents: • The library provides numerous digital resources, including indexes and abstracting sources, online reference tools, full-text files, and numeric data files. • The library has had an integrated, automated system for more than fifteen years and provides a multifaceted library web presence, though the page addressing the library’s collections and services in Karen’s subject areas is brief.

5. Mt. Sunflower State University • Location: Mt. Sunflower, Kansas • Numbers of students: 30,000 • Graduate Students: 6,276 • Numbers of faculty members in the Sociology, Social Work, Family Social Science and Rural Sociology Departments: 60 • Number of Graduate Students in these departments: 70 • Budget: $30,000

6. Step 1: Learn about her Public

7. Who are Karen’s stakeholders • There are two kinds of Stakeholders • External stakeholder, i.e. students & outside users. • To address these stakeholders, Karen will need to learn more about: • Knowledge of student needs and expectations • Student and stakeholder satisfaction • Relationship enhancement • Internal stakeholder, i.e. faculty & staff • To address these stakeholders’ needs, Karen will need to focus on: • Work systems • Faculty and staff education, training, and development • Faculty and Staff well-being and satisfaction

8. Ways to communicate with these stakeholders: • Satisfaction surveys • Designed surveys for improvement; • Benchmarking • Total Quality Management (TQM) and Continuous Quality Involement (CQI) approach

9. Gathering Secondary Data • Talk to Registrar to learn • Number of students in the programs she maintains and their levels • Number of faculty members and researchers • Karen should also become familiar with the faculty members’ web pages and curriculum vitae • Number of international students and scholars

10. Gathering primary data… http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FQM9JF9 • Karen will create a survey to give to faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students • By emailing the survey, Karen can also introduce herself to her users • Jensen (2009) found that using online survey tools created new relationships and was an easy way to find out exactly what the faculty need

11. Karen’s Survey

12. Survey Continued..

13. Step 2: Develop Avenues of Communication

14. Communication… • Attend informational meetings and ask how the librarian can support projects. • Deliver items in person. • Host brownbag discussions and coffee hours on focused topics. • Make presentations at regular meetings of various groups. • Visit classrooms to offer her services.

15. Working with External Stakeholders • Form partnerships, for example, with the information technology department. • Get out and learn about other groups that use the social science library, including non-profits, area schools and government agencies • Attend fairs in the social sciences to market the library and learn more about her users.

16. Part 3: Karen’s Marketing Plan:Two studies

17. Neuhaus and Snowden (2003) • A prominent Iowa university library conducted a marketing study with promotional T-shirts, pens, bookmarks, etc. • The results were mixed and it was determined that the promotional materials were quite costly.

18. McMenemy (2008) • A Scottish public librarian vents his frustration in a no-holds-barred editorial pertaining to the increasing inclusion of private-sector style direct marketing in the public libraries of the UK • He strongly contends that there is a sacred trust between public libraries and library patrons that has been breached by aggressive marketing campaigns on the part of the public libraries in the UK.

19. Marketing Pointers for Karen • Ensure that there is support by the university administration for a marketing blitz and that there are available funds in the budget. • Make sure that students/faculty are comfortable with the level of direct marketing that will be employed by the library and that no “sacred” bond is broken through the increased exposure and promotions. • Work with other subject selectors • Use reference time.

20. Revamp her resource pages.. Easy to use Tabs Related Subject Links and Helpful Links Photo

21. Step 4 Evaluating her performance

22. Tools Karen can use: • Focus Groups • Three groups: faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students • Use a moderator and another person to take notes and keep the interactions as natural as possible • Comment box on web page and at desk • Circulation statistics

23. Bibliography Johnson, P. (2009). Fundamentals of collection development and management. Washington, D.C.: American Library Association. Harer, J. B. & Cole, B. R. (2005). The importance of the stakeholder in performance measurement: Critical processes and performance measures for assessing and improving academic library services and programs. College & Research Libraries, 66(2), 149-170. Jensen, K. (2009). Engaging faculty through collection development utilizing online survey tools. Collection Building, 28(3), 117-121. Kotter, W. (1999). Bridging the great divide: Improving relations between librarians and classroom faculty. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 25(4), 294-303. Leitao, B.J. & Vergueiro, W. (2000). Using focus group approach for evaluating customers’ opinions: The experience of a Brazilian academic library. New Library World, 101(1154), 60-65. McMenemy, D. (2008). A broken relationship: Pushing direct marketing to the public library user. Library Review, 57(6), 413-415. Neuhaus, C. & Snowden, K. (2003). Public relations for a university library: A marketing programme is born. Library Management, 24(4/5), 193-203.

24. Links for Further Research We have divided our resources by subject to better assist those interested in specific areas

25. Stakeholder/User Research Jensen, K. (2009). Engaging faculty through collection development utilizing online survey tools. Collection Building, 28(3), 117-121. • Link to Article Kotter, W. (1999). Bridging the great divide: Improving relations between librarians and classroom faculty. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 25(4), 294-303. • Link to Article Harer, J. B. & Cole, B. R. (2005). The importance of the stakeholder in performance measurement: Critical processes and performance measures for assessing and improving academic library services and programs. College & Research Libraries, 66(2), 149-170. Leitao, B.J. & Vergueiro, W. (2000). Using focus group approach for evaluating customers’ opinions: The experience of a Brazilian academic library. New Library World, 101(1154), 60-65. • Link to Article

26. Marketing Ideas Neuhaus, C. & Snowden, K. (2003). Public relations for a university library: A marketing programme is born. Library Management, 24(4/5), 193-203. http://0-www.emeraldinsight.com.www.whitelib.emporia.edu/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?contentType=Article&Filename=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/0150240402.pdf McMenemy, D. (2008). A broken relationship: Pushing direct marketing to the public library user. Library Review, 57(6), 413-415. http://0-www.emeraldinsight.com.www.whitelib.emporia.edu/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?contentType=Article&Filename=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/0350570601.pdf