Marketing şi publicitate. Aspecte ale promovării serviciilor de bibliotecă
Marketing and Advertising. Some Aspects Concerning the Promoting of Library Services

Summary/Abstract: Library’ s marketing represents a special chapter of the managerial sciences, whose special role is to reveal the most appropriate ways of using advertising in promoting public services. Thus, it is close connected to the necessity to reinforce library’ position inside community. During the last decades, library has gradually changed; its importance for the community became more important and library seems to be prepared to pass into a new age, that of becoming an efficient centre of information and documentation. According to the new status, library is able to offer the best information community needs, although the information are used for documentation, education or just for pleasure. Considering nowadays realities, a world in which the information market has become the frame of communicational competition and informational power, the managers of public libraries might get some remarkable advantages, by organizing marketing centres that will answer to the beneficiary requests. Library’ marketing, as a special domain, is due to the necessity of consolidation the library role inside community and its role is to reveal to all beneficiaries the quality and the performances of the services library is offering to them. We must admit that the consolidation of library’ image inside community does request some directory lines that must be followed: • the getting out a market strategy, based on definite terms; • the mentioning of those services that will be offered to public; • the identification of readers profile; • the assignation of the content of those messages that will be communicated to the public; • the choice of the communicational channels; • the working-out of the teasers; • the identification of the most suitable places for the commercials. Marketing, as a separate field of activity, is based on these principles and it is conditioned by financial and human resources, specially assigned for this purpose. It must have, as a departure point, the identification of the interests the community that it serves has. We have to admit that it is our duty to get the most out of advertising and to pay attention to the posters and teasers, whose role in spreading the information about the services library offers is quite outstanding. In fact, the posters and the teasers represent an important aspect of an advertising system, which is very complex, and their role is to emphasize the performances of public libraries, both by turning to good account the collections and by promoting better cultural projects. According to Arthur W. Page, each institution whose purpose is to offer better services to its public, has to invest a lot in advertising, because „the perception of the public over the activity of an institution consists on 90 percent of what it is doing and 10 percent of what it is telling.” Information, in commercial conception, must have a specialized character and it comprehends some categories of information: • information about the library type and its objectives; • precise information about the library address; • some details information about the library services of study and documentation; • some aspects concerning the distribution of the books inside library and its branches; • some notes about the organization of the library catalogues. The information will be presented in such a way that the will emphasize the library status and the advantages of using the services it offers to its readers. Concerning the public library, the aspect that will be highlighted refers to its gratuitousness services, to its encyclopaedic collections and data bases. If the information is as concise and clear as possible, the public will better understand the library’ role, as an educative and cultural agent, inside community,. It is also very important for theteasers to emphasize the information concerning the high quality of the services library offers and the professional efficiency of the librarians. Library’ marketing includes a very complex system of means of communication and, by using them, we are able to explain the helpfulness of library’ services. With their help, we manage to use symbolic and textual arguments in order to emphasize the quality of the cultural, educational and informational goods library offers to its readers. Posters and teasers have many functions to attend to: • to attract new readers; • to promote new cultural services; • to facilitate the communication to all the citizens; • to contribute to the better image library has inside community; • to augment the social status of the librarians. More than that, the message that will be transmitted using commercials has to create some connections to cultural archetypes, such as popular tradition and national specific, community’ s life, the relationships between men and women, different religious believes, social and educational status. Watching a poster, each beneficiary becomes an interpreter, because he must decide over the quality of the products he will buy. We are not allowed to ignore the importance of commercial instruments; we must consider them as quick-acting and effective communication means and among them, we should mention TV programmes, radio transmissions and cultural meetings. According to each communicational channel - radio, TV, Internet - there must be used different devices, in order to get the best results. Advertising requires different types of activities: • the assessment of the goals; • the choice of the best advertising instruments; • the project and the content of the teasers; • the expected results of the advertising campaign. There are also many types of advertising: • institutional advertising; • the advertising of a service or a product; • comparative advertising. As a result of advertising, there should be registered an ever-growing number of the readers and the perception of the library inside community - as one of the most important factors of permanent education, an institution whose capacity of collecting, processing and spreading information is quite impressive - changes in the most positive way. In fact, the most valuable cultural treasure of the library is information, although it is written on traditional support, on paper (such as books, serials etc.) or on electronic one, or even data bases. This treasure must be promoted at its best, by using the most appropriate means of advertising in order to serve the readers. Thus, we may conclude that library’ marketing is both art and science and it requires special skills in order to manage the advertising at its best. Readers must be convinced that there is nothing more mysterious than book and that the cultural activities’ goal is to underline new horizons of cultural, spiritual, scientific, economic and political knowledge.

• Details
• Contents